Somatostatin-expressing parafacial neurons are CO2/H+ sensitive and regulate baseline breathing
- University of Connecticut, United States
- The Jackson Laboratory, United States
Abstract
Glutamatergic neurons in the retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN) function as respiratory chemoreceptors by regulating breathing in response to tissue CO2/H+. The RTN and greater parafacial region may also function as a chemosensing network composed of CO2/H+-sensitive excitatory and inhibitory synaptic interactions. In the context of disease, we showed that loss of inhibitory neural activity in a mouse model of Dravet syndrome disinhibited RTN chemoreceptors and destabilized breathing (Kuo et. al., 2019; 25). Despite this, contributions of parafacial inhibitory neurons to control of breathing are unknown, and synaptic properties of RTN neurons have not been characterized. Here, we show the parafacial region contains a limited diversity of inhibitory neurons including somatostatin (Sst)-, parvalbumin (Pvalb)- and cholecystokinin (Cck)-expressing neurons. Of these, Sst-expressing interneurons appear uniquely inhibited by CO2/H+. We also show RTN chemoreceptors receive inhibitory input that is withdrawn in a CO2/H+-dependent manner, and chemogenetic suppression of Sst+ parafacial neurons, but not Pvalb+ or Cck+ neurons, increases baseline breathing. These results suggest Sst-expressing parafacial neurons contribute to RTN chemoreception and respiratory activity.
Data availability
Raw and processed scRNA-seq data are available through the Gene Expression Omnibus (accession GSE153172) and analysis code is available on GitHub. Analysis of FISH, electrophysiology, and respiratory activity data was done using standard software and no custom code was written.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (HL104101)
- Daniel K Mulkey
National Institutes of Health (HL137094)
- Daniel K Mulkey
National Institutes of Health (NS099887)
- Daniel K Mulkey
National Institutes of Health (HL142227)
- Colin M Cleary
National Institutes of Health (F31NS120467)
- Brenda M Milla
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All procedures were performed in accordance with National Institutes of Health and University of Connecticut Animal Care and Use Guidelines (protocols A19-048 and A20-016).
Copyright
© 2021, Cleary 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.
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Somatostatin-expressing parafacial neurons are CO2/H+ sensitive and regulate baseline breathing
eLife 10:e60317.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60317
Further reading
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Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a global health problem with limited therapeutic options. The biochemical mechanisms that lead to this disorder are not yet fully understood, and in this respect, metabolomics represents a promising approach to decipher metabolic events related to AUD. The plasma metabolome contains a plethora of bioactive molecules that reflects the functional changes in host metabolism but also the impact of the gut microbiome and nutritional habits.
Methods:
In this study, we investigated the impact of severe AUD (sAUD), and of a 3-week period of alcohol abstinence, on the blood metabolome (non-targeted LC-MS metabolomics analysis) in 96 sAUD patients hospitalized for alcohol withdrawal.
Results:
We found that the plasma levels of different lipids ((lyso)phosphatidylcholines, long-chain fatty acids), short-chain fatty acids (i.e. 3-hydroxyvaleric acid) and bile acids were altered in sAUD patients. In addition, several microbial metabolites, including indole-3-propionic acid, p-cresol sulfate, hippuric acid, pyrocatechol sulfate, and metabolites belonging to xanthine class (paraxanthine, theobromine and theophylline) were sensitive to alcohol exposure and alcohol withdrawal. 3-Hydroxyvaleric acid, caffeine metabolites (theobromine, paraxanthine, and theophylline) and microbial metabolites (hippuric acid and pyrocatechol sulfate) were correlated with anxiety, depression and alcohol craving. Metabolomics analysis in postmortem samples of frontal cortex and cerebrospinal fluid of those consuming a high level of alcohol revealed that those metabolites can be found also in brain tissue.
Conclusions:
Our data allow the identification of neuroactive metabolites, from interactions between food components and microbiota, which may represent new targets arising in the management of neuropsychiatric diseases such as sAUD.
Funding:
Gut2Behave project was initiated from ERA-NET NEURON network (Joint Transnational Call 2019) and was financed by Academy of Finland, French National Research Agency (ANR-19-NEUR-0003-03) and the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS; PINT-MULTI R.8013.19, Belgium). Metabolomics analysis of the TSDS samples was supported by grant from the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies.
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