Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中央大學 === 生命科學系 === 107 === Behavior is driven by environmental stimulation that triggers brain activity with lots of
molecular mechanisms. The process of learning and memory contains stimulation-induced
changes that happen in the synaptic connections between neurons in the hippocampus, which
plays a pivotal role in the formation of long term somatic and episodic memories. By Morris
water maze experiment and RNA analysis, we show that some micro-RNAs (miRNA) are
expressed differently between learned and unlearned mice. One of the miRNAs, miR-466f-3p,
which belongs to post transcriptional regulator, is abundantly express in brain and generated in
the intron-10 of Sfmbt2 gene. However, the mRNA expression of Sfmbt2 is significantly
different from miR-466f-3p. Inhibition of epigenetic modification, such as DNA methylation,
can affect gene expression. Treatment of 5’Aza-dC, a methyltransferase inhibitor, to the
hippocampal primary culture neuron causes Bdnf, Nrf2, Sfmbt2 mRNA and miR466f-3p
expression increased. However, the methylation pattern in the promoter region of the miR-466f
cluster is not significantly different between learned and unlearned mice. The evidence show
that the changes of DNA methylation under the stress of the Morris water maze indirectly
participate in the regulating of miR-466f-3p induction in the hippocampus-dependent spatial
learning and memory formation.
Keywords: Epigenetic, mi-RNAs induction, Methylation
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