Identifying new players in structural synaptic plasticity through dArc1 interrogation

Cong Xiao; P Githure M'Angale; Shuhao Wang; Adrienne Lemieux; Travis Thomson

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.108048

Identifying new players in structural synaptic plasticity through dArc1 interrogation

iScience. 2023 Sep 27;26(11):108048. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108048. eCollection 2023 Nov 17.

Authors

Cong Xiao¹, P Githure M'Angale¹, Shuhao Wang¹, Adrienne Lemieux¹, Travis Thomson¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Neurobiology, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, 364 Plantation Street, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.

Abstract

The formation, expansion, and pruning of synapses, known as structural synaptic plasticity, is needed for learning and memory, and perturbation of plasticity is associated with many neurological disorders and diseases. Previously, we observed that the Drosophila homolog of Activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein (dArc1), forms a capsid-like structure, associates with its own mRNA, and is transported across synapses. We demonstrated that this transfer is needed for structural synaptic plasticity. To identify mRNAs that are modified by dArc1 in presynaptic neuron and postsynaptic muscle, we disrupted the expression of dArc1 and performed genomic analysis with deep sequencing. We found that dArc1 affects the expression of genes involved in metabolism, phagocytosis, and RNA-splicing. Through immunoprecipitation we also identified potential mRNA cargos of dArc1 capsids. This study suggests that dArc1 acts as a master regulator of plasticity by affecting several distinct and highly conserved cellular processes.

Keywords: Cellular neuroscience; Molecular neuroscience; Neuroscience; Omics; Transcriptomics.

Abstract

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