PLX154932

GSE148440: Molecular and cellular consequences of genetic knockout of Hdac2 and Hdac3 in striatal medium spiny neurons of Huntington's disease knock-in mice

• Organsim mouse
• Type RNASEQ
• Target gene
• Project ARCHS4

Somatic expansion of the Huntingtons disease (HD) CAG repeat drives the rate of a pathogenic process resulting in neuronal cell death. Although mechanisms of neuronal toxicity are not well delineated, transcriptional dysregulation is a likely contributor. Chromatin modifiers are implicated in both mechanisms of CAG instability and transcriptional dysregulation. Here, we tested whether histone deacetylase genes Hdac2 and Hdac3 modify molecular and cellular phenotypes in HttQ111 knock-in mice using conditional knockouts in striatal medium-spiny striatal neurons (MSNs) exhibiting extensive CAG expansion and exquisite disease vulnerability. MSN-specific Hdac2 or Hdac3 knockout attenuated CAG expansion, with the Hdac2 knockout impacting nuclear huntingtin pathology. Hdac2 knockout resulted in a substantial transcriptional response that included reversal of transcriptional dysregulation elicited by the HttQ111 allele. Our results identify novel modifiers of CAG expansion in MSNs, providing testable mechanistic hypotheses, and a potentially complex relationship between Htt and Hdac2 with implications for targeting transcriptional dysregulation in HD. SOURCE: Serkan Erdin (serdin@mgh.harvard.edu) - Talkowski Lab Massachusetts General Hospital