Slx8 removes Pli1-dependent protein-SUMO conjugates including SUMOylated Topoisomerase I to promote genome stability

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Correlations of Behavioral Deficits with Brain Pathology Assessed through Longitudinal MRI and Histopathology in the R6/2 Mouse Model of HD

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by the expansion of a CAG repeat in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. The R6/2 mouse model of HD expresses a mutant version of exon 1 HTT and develops motor and cognitive impairments, a widespread huntingtin (HTT) aggregate pathology and brain atrophy. Despite the vast number of studies that have been performed on this model, the association between the molecular and cellular neuropathology with brain atrophy, and with the development of behavioral phenotypes remains poorly understood. In an attempt to link these factors, we have performed longitudinal assessments of behavior (rotarod, open field, passive avoidance) and of regional brain abnormalities determined through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (whole brain, striatum, cortex, hippocampus, corpus callosum), as well as an end-stage histological assessment. Detailed correlative analyses of these three measures were then performed. We found a gender-dependent emergence of motor impairments that was associated with an age-related loss of regional brain volumes. MRI measurements further indicated that there was no striatal atrophy, but rather a lack of striatal growth beyond 8 weeks of age. T2 relaxivity further indicated tissue-level changes within brain regions. Despite these dramatic motor and neuroanatomical abnormalities, R6/2 mice did not exhibit neuronal loss in the striatum or motor cortex, although there was a significant increase in neuronal density due to tissue atrophy. The deposition of the mutant HTT (mHTT) protein, the hallmark of HD molecular pathology, was widely distributed throughout the brain. End-stage histopathological assessments were not found to be as robustly correlated with the longitudinal measures of brain atrophy or motor impairments. In conclusion, modeling pre-manifest and early progression of the disease in more slowly progressing animal models will be key to establishing which changes are causally related. © 2013 Rattray et al

Natural variation in sensory-motor white matter organization influences manifestations of Huntington's disease

While the HTT CAG-repeat expansion mutation causing Huntington's disease (HD) is highly correlated with the rate of pathogenesis leading to disease onset, considerable variance in age-at-onset remains unexplained. Therefore, other factors must influence the pathogenic process. We asked whether these factors were related to natural biological variation in the sensory-motor system. In 243 participants (96 premanifest and 35 manifest HD; 112 controls), sensory-motor structural MRI, tractography, resting-state fMRI, electrophysiology (including SEP amplitudes), motor score ratings, and grip force as sensory-motor performance were measured. Following individual modality analyses, we used principal component analysis (PCA) to identify patterns associated with sensory-motor performance, and manifest versus premanifest HD discrimination. We did not detect longitudinal differences over 12 months. PCA showed a pattern of loss of caudate, grey and white matter volume, cortical thickness in premotor and sensory cortex, and disturbed diffusivity in sensory-motor white matter tracts that was connected to CAG repeat length. Two further major principal components appeared in controls and HD individuals indicating that they represent natural biological variation unconnected to the HD mutation. One of these components did not influence HD while the other non-CAG-driven component of axial versus radial diffusivity contrast in white matter tracts were associated with sensory-motor performance and manifest HD. The first component reflects the expected CAG expansion effects on HD pathogenesis. One non-CAG-driven component reveals an independent influence on pathogenesis of biological variation in white matter tracts and merits further investigation to delineate the underlying mechanism and the potential it offers for disease modification

Magnetization transfer imaging in ‘premanifest’ Huntington’s disease

To investigate whether magnetization transfer imaging (MTI) is a useful detector of diffuse brain abnormalities in ‘premanifest’ carriers of the Huntington’s disease (HD) gene mutation. Furthermore we examined the relations between MTI, clinical measures and CAG repeat length. Sixteen premanifest carriers of the HD gene without motor manifestation and 14 non-carriers underwent a clinical evaluation and a MRI scan. MTI analysis of whole brain, grey matter and white matter was performed producing magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) histograms. A lower peak height of the grey matter MTR histogram in carriers was significantly associated with more UHDRS motor abnormalities. Furthermore, a lower peak height of the whole brain, grey and white matter was strongly associated with a longer CAG repeat length. MTI measures themselves did not differ significantly between carriers and non-carriers. In premanifest HD mutation carriers, a lower MTR peak height, reflecting worse histological brain composition, was related to subtle motor abnormalities and higher CAG repeat length. Although we could not detect altered MTI characteristics in carriers of the HD gene mutation without clinical manifestations, we did provide evidence that the MTR peak height might reflect genetic and subclinical disease burden and may be of value in monitoring further disease progression and provide insight in clinical heterogeneity

High serum levels of transforming growth factor β1 are associated with increased cortical thickness in cingulate and right frontal areas in healthy subjects

ABSTRACT

Longitudinal in vivo MRI in a Huntington’s disease mouse model: global atrophy in the absence of white matter microstructural damage

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a genetically-determined neurodegenerative disease. Characterising neuropathology in mouse models of HD is commonly restricted to cross-sectional ex vivo analyses, beset by tissue fixation issues. In vivo longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allows for disease progression to be probed non-invasively. In the HdhQ150 mouse model of HD, in vivo MRI was employed at two time points, before and after the onset of motor signs, to assess brain macrostructure and white matter microstructure. Ex vivo MRI, immunohistochemistry, transmission electron microscopy and behavioural testing were also conducted. Global brain atrophy was found in HdhQ150 mice at both time points, with no neuropathological progression across time and an elective sparing of the cerebellum. In contrast, no white matter abnormalities were detected from the MRI images or electron microscopy images alike. The relationship between motor function and MR-based structural measurements was different for the HdhQ150 and wild-type mice, although there was no relationship between motor deficits and histopathology. Widespread neuropathology prior to symptom onset is consistent with patient studies, whereas the absence of white matter abnormalities conflicts with patient data. The myriad reasons for this inconsistency require further attention to improve the translatability from mouse models of disease

Segmentation of corpus callosum using diffusion tensor imaging: validation in patients with glioblastoma

Abstract Background This paper presents a three-dimensional (3D) method for segmenting corpus callosum in normal subjects and brain cancer patients with glioblastoma. Methods Nineteen patients with histologically confirmed treatment naïve glioblastoma and eleven normal control subjects underwent DTI on a 3T scanner. Based on the information inherent in diffusion tensors, a similarity measure was proposed and used in the proposed algorithm. In this algorithm, diffusion pattern of corpus callosum was used as prior information. Subsequently, corpus callosum was automatically divided into Witelson subdivisions. We simulated the potential rotation of corpus callosum under tumor pressure and studied the reproducibility of the proposed segmentation method in such cases. Results Dice coefficients, estimated to compare automatic and manual segmentation results for Witelson subdivisions, ranged from 94% to 98% for control subjects and from 81% to 95% for tumor patients, illustrating closeness of automatic and manual segmentations. Studying the effect of corpus callosum rotation by different Euler angles showed that although segmentation results were more sensitive to azimuth and elevation than skew, rotations caused by brain tumors do not have major effects on the segmentation results. Conclusions The proposed method and similarity measure segment corpus callosum by propagating a hyper-surface inside the structure (resulting in high sensitivity), without penetrating into neighboring fiber bundles (resulting in high specificity)

Automated hippocampal segmentation in 3D MRI using random undersampling with boosting algorithm

The automated identification of brain structure in Magnetic Resonance Imaging is very important both in neuroscience research and as a possible clinical diagnostic tool. In this study, a novel strategy for fully automated hippocampal segmentation in MRI is presented. It is based on a supervised algorithm, called RUSBoost, which combines data random undersampling with a boosting algorithm. RUSBoost is an algorithm specifically designed for imbalanced classification, suitable for large data sets because it uses random undersampling of the majority class. The RUSBoost performances were compared with those of ADABoost, Random Forest and the publicly available brain segmentation package, FreeSurfer. This study was conducted on a data set of 50 T1-weighted structural brain images. The RUSBoost-based segmentation tool achieved the best results with a Dice’s index of (Formula presented.) (Formula presented.) for the left (right) brain hemisphere. An independent data set of 50 T1-weighted structural brain scans was used for an independent validation of the fully trained strategies. Again the RUSBoost segmentations compared favorably with manual segmentations with the highest performances among the four tools. Moreover, the Pearson correlation coefficient between hippocampal volumes computed by manual and RUSBoost segmentations was 0.83 (0.82) for left (right) side, statistically significant, and higher than those computed by Adaboost, Random Forest and FreeSurfer. The proposed method may be suitable for accurate, robust and statistically significant segmentations of hippocampi

SIRT2 Ablation Has No Effect on Tubulin Acetylation in Brain, Cholesterol Biosynthesis or the Progression of Huntington's Disease Phenotypes In Vivo

Huntington's disease (HD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder for which there are no disease-modifying treatments. The molecular pathogenesis of HD is complex and many mechanisms and cellular processes have been proposed as potential sites of therapeutic intervention. However, prior to embarking on drug development initiatives, it is essential that therapeutic targets can be validated in mammalian models of HD. Previous studies in invertebrate and cell culture HD models have suggested that inhibition of SIRT2 could have beneficial consequences on disease progression. SIRT2 is a NAD[superscript +]-dependent deacetylase that has been proposed to deacetylate α-tubulin, histone H4 K16 and to regulate cholesterol biogenesis – a pathway which is dysregulated in HD patients and HD mouse models. We have utilized mice in which SIRT2 has been reduced or ablated to further explore the function of SIRT2 and to assess whether SIRT2 loss has a beneficial impact on disease progression in the R6/2 mouse model of HD. Surprisingly we found that reduction or loss of SIRT2 had no effect on the acetylation of α-tubulin or H4K16 or on cholesterol biosynthesis in the brains of wild type mice. Equally, genetic reduction or ablation of SIRT2 had no effect on HD progression as assessed by a battery of physiological and behavioural tests. Furthermore, we observed no change in aggregate load or levels of soluble mutant huntingtin transprotein. Intriguingly, neither the constitutive genetic loss nor acute pharmacological inhibition of SIRT2 affected the expression of cholesterol biosynthesis enzymes in the context of HD. Therefore, we conclude that SIRT2 inhibition does not modify disease progression in the R6/2 mouse model of HD and SIRT2 inhibition should not be prioritised as a therapeutic option for HD.American Parkinson Disease Association, Inc. (Fellowship)Johnson & Johnson. Pharmaceutical Research & Development (Fellowship