Prenatal nicotine exposure alters gene expression profiles of neurons in the sub-regions of the VTA during early postnatal development

Brain growth occurs during the first 2 weeks of postnatal development in rats. This developmental period is equivalent to the third trimester of human gestation. Dendritic arborization, axonal growth, and gliogenesis are observed along with a strong maturation of neurotransmission during this critic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 4911
Main Authors:	McGill, Lindsey D., Avci, Naze G., Kazemi, Tina, Sunaga, Yoshinori, Akay, Yasemin M., Akay, Metin
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group UK 25-03-2023 Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio
Subjects:	631/136 631/378 631/378/1788 Animals Breast feeding Cognitive ability Dendritic branching Dopamine Dopamine - metabolism Dopaminergic Neurons - metabolism Female Gene expression Gliogenesis Humanities and Social Sciences Humans Information processing Juveniles multidisciplinary Neurons Neurotransmission Nicotine Nicotine - adverse effects Nicotine - metabolism Perinatal exposure Pregnancy Prenatal experience Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects - genetics Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects - metabolism Rats Rats, Sprague-Dawley Science Science (multidisciplinary) Sensory integration Transcriptome Tyrosine 3-monooxygenase Ventral Tegmental Area - metabolism Ventral tegmentum γ-Aminobutyric acid
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Summary:	Brain growth occurs during the first 2 weeks of postnatal development in rats. This developmental period is equivalent to the third trimester of human gestation. Dendritic arborization, axonal growth, and gliogenesis are observed along with a strong maturation of neurotransmission during this critical development period. Furthermore, nicotine exposure during early development causes deficiencies in sensory and cognitive processing in adults. In this study, we further investigated the gene expression of neuron groups and the influence of perinatal nicotine exposure on gene expressions of neurons within the sub-regions of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in 1 week, 2 week and 3-week-old rat pups. We exposed pregnant rats to nicotine perinatally on gestational day 7 through postnatal day 14. Pups are exposed to nicotine during pregnancy and through breastfeeding to investigate its effect in rat pups during early neuronal development. Real time PCR was used to find the relative expressions of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), dopamine, and glutamate neuron markers within the three sub-regions of the VTA including the parabrachial pigmented nucleus (PBP), parainterfascicular (PIF), and paranigral nucleus (PN). Our results indicated that during early maturation, the dopamine marker tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) showed a consistently increased significance in PN sub-region compared to PIF and PBP. These results suggest that following perinatal nicotine exposure, VTA dopamine neurons, especially within the PN sub-region, are significantly excited starting from birth.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	2045-2322 2045-2322
DOI:	10.1038/s41598-023-31997-8