Abstract / Description of output
Astrocytes are implicated in neurodegenerative disorders and may contribute to striatal neuron loss or dysfunction in Huntington’s disease (HD). Here, we assessed striatal astrocyte gene and protein signatures in two HD mouse models at three stages and compared our results to human HD data at four clinical grades and to mice exhibiting polyglutamine length–dependent pathology. We found disease-model and stage-specific alterations and discovered a core disease-associated astrocyte molecular signature comprising 62 genes that were conserved between mice and humans. Our results show little evidence of neurotoxic A1 astrocytes that have been proposed to be causal for neuronal death in neurodegenerative disorders such as HD. Furthermore, 61 of the 62-core gene expression changes within astrocytes were reversed in a HD mouse model by lowering astrocyte mutant huntingtin protein (mHTT) expression using zinc finger protein (ZFP) transcriptional repressors. Our findings indicate that HD astrocytes progressively lose essential normal functions, some of which can be remedied by lowering mHTT. The data have implications for neurodegenerative disease rescue and repair strategies as well as specific therapeutic relevance for mHTT reduction and contribute to a better understanding of fundamental astrocyte biology and its contributions to disease.
Original language | English |
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Article number | eaaw8546 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Science Translational Medicine |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 514 |
Early online date | 16 Oct 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 16 Oct 2019 |
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Blanca Diaz-Castro
- Deanery of Biomedical Sciences - UK DRI Programme Leader (Fellow)
- Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences
- Edinburgh Neuroscience
Person: Academic: Research Active , Academic: Research Active (Research Assistant)