Imaging Dendritic mRNA Transport and Translation in Health and Disease

Lay Summary

How Lack of a Specific Regulatory Protein may Result in Mental Retardation

Investigators will examine the normal role of a specific protein that is missing in males who have an inherited form of mental retardation in order to determine how this protein deficiency impairs cognitive development.  The findings may lead to new avenues for preventing this, and perhaps other, mental disabilities.

The researchers hypothesize that males who inherited “Fragile X syndrome” have a gene that failed during their development to produce an essential protein that guides brain cell communication.  The investigators suggest that the “Fragile X protein” ordinarily guides “messenger RNA” on its route to convey DNA instructions to cells in the brain’s hippocampus, where long-term memory and learning occur.  Specifically, the Fragile X protein ordinarily directs messenger RNA to hippocampal brain cell dendrites, the long branches that connect one brain cell to another so that they can communicate.

The DNA message instructs dendrites on how to make and use a neurotransmitter, called glutamate, which is needed for cellular communication.  Without these instructions, according to the investigators, the dendrites never produce and use glutamate to pass messages from one dendrite to another at the junction between the two, called a “synapse.”  The investigators suggest that males who lack this essential protein, therefore, fail to develop the capacity to transmit messages from one brain cell to another to enable them to learn and form memories.

The investigators will test their hypothesis by visualizing the actions of the normal Fragile X protein and the messenger RNA’s that this protein guides to their appropriate hippocampal neurons. They will accomplish this by using new microscopic and florescent techniques to image laboratory cell cultures of live hippocampal neurons.  Then, the researchers will compare these findings to the actions of hippocampal cells cultures taken from an animal model of Fragile X syndrome, in which the protein is missing, to see if their hypothesis is correct.

Significance:  This research to determine the normal role of the Fragile X protein in brain development could produce a better understanding of how this protein guides messenger RNA to deliver its message.  This might lead to means to correct for this lack, and might also have implications for developing approaches to prevent autism and other developmentally acquired mental deficiencies.

Abstract

Imaging Dendritic mRNA Transport and Translation in Health and Disease

We will develop high resolution fluorescence and live cell imaging methods to test the hypothesis that specific mRNA binding proteins are required for the glutamatergic regulation of mRNA transport in dendrites and their subsynaptic translation. Recent identification of mRNAs that are bound by these proteins now makes it possible to investigate whether specific RNA-protein interactions occur in dendrites and at synapses.

An inherent difficulty in studying RNA-protein interactions in dendrites has been the lack of suitable high resolution microscopic technology to visualize mRNA transport and identify sites of local translation. A new view of the dynamic process toward local translation is made possible by utilizing novel microscopic and imaging technology to visualize mRNAs and their binding proteins in live neurons. Our recent studies have used cultured hippocampal neurons to show that the mRNA binding proteins, ZBP1 and FMRP, are localized in granules within dendrites and spines. ZBP and FMRP granules were induced to traffic in response to activation of NMDA and metabotropic glutmate receptors respectively.

An important objective is to extend our observations of mRNA granule transport in dissociated cultures to organotypic slice cultures. We hypothesize that synaptic activity leading to long-term plasticity involves the trafficking of specific mRNA binding proteins, which serve as adapters to permit the selective localization of mRNAs. We suggest that there may be different classes of RNA granules which respond to specific types of glutamatergic signals.

For the proposed research, we will use hippocampal slice cultures and two-photon microscopy to investigate whether glutamate receptor activation can stimulate trafficking of these mRNA binding proteins, which will be fused to different fluorescent proteins and co-expressed. We also propose to refine the MS2 labeling method, using different color fluorescent proteins, to permit the simultaneous visualization and tracking of mRNA binding proteins and their target mRNAs in dendrites and spines of live neurons. Hippocampal neurons will also be transfected with dominant negative forms of RNPs or cultured from knockout mice to assess whether there are defects in the regulated trafficking of mRNAs in dendrites and spines. Experiments will also be done using fluorescent reporters to visualize glutamate-dependent translation in dendrites and to assess possible defects in the regulated translation of target mRNAs in hippocampal neurons transfected with mutant RNPs or cultured from knockout mice.

These studies will elucidate specific mRNA-protein interactions that are involved in different forms of protein synthesis-dependent synaptic plasticity. Such findings will provide insight into neurological diseases, such as Fragile X syndrome, and efforts to develop potential targets for therapeutic intervention.