Necdin shapes serotonergic development and SERT activity modulating breathing in a mouse model for Prader-Willi Syndrome
Abstract
Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder that presents with hypotonia and respiratory distress in neonates. The Necdin-deficient mouse is the only model that reproduces the respiratory phenotype of PWS (central apnea and blunted response to respiratory challenges). Here, we report that Necdin deletion disturbs the migration of serotonin (5-HT) neuronal precursors, leading to altered global serotonergic neuroarchitecture and increased spontaneous firing of 5-HT neurons. We show an increased expression and activity of 5-HT Transporter (SERT/Slc6a4) in 5-HT neurons leading to an increase of 5-HT uptake. In Necdin-KO pups, the genetic deletion of Slc6a4 or treatment with Fluoxetine, a 5-HT reuptake inhibitor, restored normal breathing. Unexpectedly, Fluoxetine administration was associated with respiratory side effects in wild-type animals. Overall, our results demonstrate that an increase of SERT activity is sufficient to cause the apneas in Necdin-KO pups, and that Fluoxetine may offer therapeutic benefits to PWS patients with respiratory complications.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale
- Valéry Matarazzo
- Laura Caccialupi
- Fabienne Schaller
- Nazim Kourdougli
- Alessandra Bertoni
- Clément Menuet
- Patricia Gaspar
- Françoise Muscatelli
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
- Laurent Bezin
- Pascale Durbec
- Gérard Hilaire
- Françoise Muscatelli
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (PRAGEDER ANR14-CE13-0025-01)
- Valéry Matarazzo
- Fabienne Schaller
- Yuri Shvarev
- Clément Menuet
- Nicolas Voituron
- Gérard Hilaire
- Françoise Muscatelli
Stiftelsen Frimurare Barnhuset i Stockholm
- Yuri Shvarev
Kronprinsessan Lovisas Forening for Barnasjukvard
- Yuri Shvarev
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Mice were handled and cared for in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (N.R.C., 1996) and the European Communities Council Directive of September 22th 2010 (2010/63/EU, 74). Experimental protocols were approved by the Institutional Ethical Committee guidelines for animal research with the accreditation no. B13-055-19 from the French Ministry of Agriculture.
Copyright
© 2017, Matarazzo et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,375
- views
-
- 250
- downloads
-
- 27
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Developmental Biology
- Neuroscience
Otolith organs in the inner ear and neuromasts in the fish lateral-line harbor two populations of hair cells oriented to detect stimuli in opposing directions. The underlying mechanism is highly conserved: the transcription factor EMX2 is regionally expressed in just one hair cell population and acts through the receptor GPR156 to reverse cell orientation relative to the other population. In mouse and zebrafish, loss of Emx2 results in sensory organs that harbor only one hair cell orientation and are not innervated properly. In zebrafish, Emx2 also confers hair cells with reduced mechanosensory properties. Here, we leverage mouse and zebrafish models lacking GPR156 to determine how detecting stimuli of opposing directions serves vestibular function, and whether GPR156 has other roles besides orienting hair cells. We find that otolith organs in Gpr156 mouse mutants have normal zonal organization and normal type I-II hair cell distribution and mechano-electrical transduction properties. In contrast, gpr156 zebrafish mutants lack the smaller mechanically evoked signals that characterize Emx2-positive hair cells. Loss of GPR156 does not affect orientation-selectivity of afferents in mouse utricle or zebrafish neuromasts. Consistent with normal otolith organ anatomy and afferent selectivity, Gpr156 mutant mice do not show overt vestibular dysfunction. Instead, performance on two tests that engage otolith organs is significantly altered – swimming and off-vertical-axis rotation. We conclude that GPR156 relays hair cell orientation and transduction information downstream of EMX2, but not selectivity for direction-specific afferents. These results clarify how molecular mechanisms that confer bi-directionality to sensory organs contribute to function, from single hair cell physiology to animal behavior.
-
- Neuroscience
Animals navigate by learning the spatial layout of their environment. We investigated spatial learning of mice in an open maze where food was hidden in one of a hundred holes. Mice leaving from a stable entrance learned to efficiently navigate to the food without the need for landmarks. We developed a quantitative framework to reveal how the mice estimate the food location based on analyses of trajectories and active hole checks. After learning, the computed ‘target estimation vector’ (TEV) closely approximated the mice’s route and its hole check distribution. The TEV required learning both the direction and distance of the start to food vector, and our data suggests that different learning dynamics underlie these estimates. We propose that the TEV can be precisely connected to the properties of hippocampal place cells. Finally, we provide the first demonstration that, after learning the location of two food sites, the mice took a shortcut between the sites, demonstrating that they had generated a cognitive map.