Journal article

Wheel Running and Environmental Enrichment Differentially Modify Exon-Specific BDNF Expression in the Hippocampus of Wild-Type and Pre-motor Symptomatic Male and Female Huntington's Disease Mice

MS Zajac, TYC Pang, N Wong, B Weinrich, LSK Leang, JM Craig, R Saffery, AJ Hannan

HIPPOCAMPUS | WILEY | Published : 2010

Abstract

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is an essential neurotrophin and regulation of its expression is complex due to multiple 5' untranslated exons which are separately spliced to a common coding exon to form unique mRNA transcripts. Disruption of BDNF gene expression is a key to the development of symptoms in Huntington's disease (HD), a fatal neurodegenerative condition. Abnormal epigenetic modifications are associated with reduced gene expression in late-stage HD but such regulation of BDNF gene expression has yet to be investigated. We hypothesized that BDNF gene expression is altered in the HD hippocampus of pre-motor symptomatic R6/1 transgenic HD mice, correlating with a change in..

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