Turnover of histones and histone variants in postnatal rat brain: effects of alcohol exposure
Abstract
Alcohol consumption during pregnancy is a significant public health problem and can result in a continuum of adverse outcomes to the fetus known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). Subjects with FASD show significant neurological deficits, ranging from microencephaly, neurobehavioral, and mental health problems to poor social adjustment and stress tolerance. Neurons are particularly sensitive to alcohol exposure. The neurotoxic action of alcohol, i.e., through ROS production, induces DNA damage and neuronal cell death by apoptosis. In addition, epigenetics, including DNA methylation, histone posttranslational modifications (PTMs), and non-coding RNA, play an important role in the neuropathology of FASD. However, little is known about the temporal dynamics and kinetics of histones and their PTMs in FASD. We examined the effects of postnatal alcohol exposure (PAE), an animal model of human third-trimester equivalent, on the kinetics of various histone proteins in two distinct brain regions, the frontal cortex, and the hypothalamus, using in vivo 2H2O-labeling combined with mass spectrometry-based proteomics. We show that histones have long half-lives that are in the order of days. We also show that H3.3 and H2Az histone v...Continue Reading
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NELF interacts with CBC and participates in 3' end processing of replication-dependent histone mRNAs
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Apoptosis
Apoptosis is a specific process that leads to programmed cell death through the activation of an evolutionary conserved intracellular pathway leading to pathognomic cellular changes distinct from cellular necrosis