Altered gene expression in hippocampus and depressive-like behavior in young adult female mice by early protein malnutrition

LAURA BELLUSCIO; CAROLINA ALBERCA ; NICOLÁS PREGI; EDUARDO T. CÁNEPA

Genes, Brain and Behavior

Wiley

Lugar: San Francisco; Año: 2016 vol. 15 p. 741 - 749

1601-183X

Perinatal development represents a critical period in the life of an individual. A common cause of poor development is that which comes from undernutrition or malnutrition. In particular, protein deprivation during development has been shown to have deep deleterious effects on brain?s growth and plasticity. Early life stress has also been linked with an increased risk to develop different psychopathologies later in life. We have previously shown that perinatal protein malnutrition in mice leads to the appearance of anxiety-related behaviors in the adulthood. We also found evidence that the female offspring was more susceptible to the development of depression-related behaviors. In the present work we further investigated this behavior together with its molecular basis. We focused our study on the hippocampus as it is a structure involved in coping with stressful situations. We found an increase in immobility time in the forced swimming test in perinatally malnourished females, and an alteration in the expression of genes related with neuroplasticity, Egr1, calcineurin and c-fos. We also found that perinatal malnutrition causes a reduction in the number of neurons in the hippocampus. This reduction, together with altered gene expression could be related with the reduction in the number of neurons in the hippocampus.