Biology subjects

Marakhovskaia, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Marakhovskaia, A..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

A miR-137-related biological pathway of risk for Schizophrenia is associated with human brain emotion processing

Genome-Wide-Association studies have involved miR-137 in schizophrenia. However, the biology underlying this statistical evidence is unclear. Statistical polygenic risk for schizophrenia is associated with working memory, while other biological evidence involves miR-137 in emotion processing. We investigated the function of miR-137 target schizophrenia risk genes in humans. We identified a prefrontal co-expression pathway of schizophrenia-associated miR-137 targets and validated the association with miR-137 expression in neuroblastoma cells. Alleles predicting greater co-expression of this pathway were associated with greater prefrontal activation during emotion processing in two independent cohorts of healthy volunteers (N1=222; N2=136). Statistical polygenic risk for schizophrenia was instead associated with prefrontal activation during working memory. A co-expression pathway links miR-137 and its target genes to emotion processing and risk for schizophrenia. Low prefrontal miR-137 expression may be related with SCZ risk via increased expression of target risk genes, itself associated with increased prefrontal activation during emotion processing.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Fxr1 regulates sleep and synaptic homeostasis

The fragile X autosomal homolog 1 (Fxr1) has been GWAS-associated to schizophrenia and insomnia but its contributions to brain functions are unclear. Homeostatic regulation of synaptic strength is essential for the maintenance of brain functions and engages both global and cell autonomous level processes. We used Crispr/Cas9-mediated somatic knockouts, overexpression, neuronal activity recordings and translatome sequencing, to examine the contribution of Fxr1 to cell-autonomous homeostatic synaptic scaling and global-level sleep homeostasis. Our findings indicate that Fxr1 is downregulated during scaling and sleep deprivation via a Gsk3{beta} dependent mechanism. In both conditions, downregulation of Fxr1 is essential for the homeostatic modulation of synaptic strength. Furthermore, overexpression of Fxr1 during sleep deprivation results in altered EEG signatures and reverts changes of translatome profiles. These findings indicate that Fxr1 represents a shared signaling hub linking cell autonomous homeostatic plasticity and system level sleep homeostasis with potential implications for neuropsychiatric illnesses.

neuroscience↗