NEURONAL GLYCOPROTEIN M6A AS A KEY REGULATOR OF SYNAPTIC PLASTICITY DURING EXTRA UTERINE BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

LEON, ANTONELLA; APARICIO GABRIELA; CAMILA SCORTICATI; FRASCH, AC

Cordoba

Congreso; XXXIII CONGRESO ANUAL SAN 2018; 2018

SAN

During the early stages of development and in adulthood, neurons of the central nervous system suffer changes in the formation, maintenance and elimination of synapses. This process, synaptic pruning, is linked to many neurological diseases as Alzheimer?s disease and schizophrenia. The neuronal membrane glycoprotein M6a had been widely related to neuronal structural plasticity. In hippocampal cultured neurons, M6a promotes neurite and axonal outgrowth, filopodia/spines formation and enhance the number of synapses. Variations in GPM6A gene expression and SNPs are linked to mental disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, mental retardation and Alzheimer?s disease. However, there is no evidence linking M6a to the synaptic pruning process, nor potential ligands of M6a that modified their levels. Therefore, we aim to analyse the variation of M6a levels throughout brain development. To this end, Sprague-Dawley rats were sacrificed from the day of their birth, P0 (postnatal, zero), to adulthood, P90 and samples from hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, cerebellum and striatum were taken. We observed that the levels of M6a vary from P0 to P90 and this variation depends on the tissue analyzed. Moreover, we showed that M6a is expressed in the striatum, which had not been yet described. We also generated and characterized a recombinant protein that will allows us to identify M6a ligands for understand how this protein is related to the synaptic pruning.