AA is related to various psychiatric disorders. Onset age of AA is an important factor in the association with different comorbid psychiatric diseases. In addition to cosmetic impact, which may bring about anxiety or depression, stress neuroendocrine immunology may play an important role in the pathogenesis of both AA and psychiatric disorders.
Stress, a prevalent experience in modern society, is a major risk factor for many psychiatric disorders. Although sensorimotor abnormalities are often present in these disorders, little is known about how stress affects the sensory cortex. Combining behavioral analyses with in vivo synaptic imaging, we show that stressful experiences lead to progressive, clustered loss of dendritic spines along the apical dendrites of layer (L) 5 pyramidal neurons (PNs) in the mouse barrel cortex, and such spine loss closely associates with deteriorated performance in a whisker-dependent texture discrimination task. Furthermore, the activity of parvalbumin-expressing inhibitory interneurons (PV+ INs) decreases in the stressed mouse due to reduced excitability of these neurons. Importantly, both behavioral defects and structural changes of L5 PNs are prevented by selective pharmacogenetic activation of PV+ INs in the barrel cortex during stress. Finally, stressed mice raised under environmental enrichment (EE) maintain normal activation of PV+ INs, normal texture discrimination, and L5 PN spine dynamics similar to unstressed EE mice. Our findings suggest that the PV+ inhibitory circuit is crucial for normal synaptic dynamics in the mouse barrel cortex and sensory function. Pharmacological, pharmacogenetic, and environmental approaches to prevent stress-induced maladaptive behaviors and synaptic malfunctions converge on the regulation of PV+ IN activity, pointing to a potential therapeutic target for stress-related disorders.
Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein K (hnRNP K) mediates antiapoptotic activity in part by inducing downstream antiapoptotic genes. To systematically identify hnRNP K targets in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), affymetrix chips were used to identify genes that were both overexpressed in primary NPC and downregulated by hnRNP K knockdown in NPC-TW02 cells. The resulting gene set included the antiapoptotic gene, FLIP, which was selected for further study. In cells treated with hnRNP K siRNA, TRAIL-induced apoptosis was enhanced and the FLIP protein level was reduced. Promoter, DNA pull-down and chromatin-immunoprecipitation assays revealed that hnRNP K directly interacts with the poly(C) element on the FLIP promoter, resulting in transcriptional activation. Through iTRAQ-mass spectrometric identification of proteins differentially associated with the poly(C) element or its mutant, nucleolin was determined to be a cofactor of hnRNP K for FLIP activation. Furthermore, FLIP was highly expressed in tumor cells, and this high-level expression was significantly correlated with high-level hnRNP K expression (P ¼ 0.002) and poor overall survival (P ¼ 0.015) as examined in 67 NPC tissues. A multivariate analysis confirmed that FLIP was an independent prognostic factor for NPC. Taken together, these findings indicate that FLIP expression is transcriptionally regulated by hnRNP K and nucleolin, and may be a potential prognostic and therapeutic marker for NPC. Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein K (hnRNP K) belongs to the hnRNP family of proteins. The members of this family interact directly with DNA and RNA through their K-homology domains and regulate gene expression at multiple levels, including transcription, RNA splicing, RNA stability and translation.1-2 The expression of hnRNP K has been shown to be aberrantly increased in numerous cancers, [3][4][5][6] and we recently reported that high-level hnRNP K expression is correlated with poorer overall survival (OS) and decreased metastasis-free survival among nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients.5 Our findings were consistent with those from clinical correlation studies in oral squamous cell carcinoma 4 and prostate cancer. HnRNP K is a nucleocytoplasmic shuttling protein that is primarily located in the nucleus for transcriptional regulation. However, cytoplasmic accumulation of hnRNP K through ERK-mediated phosphorylation of hnRNP K serines-284 and -353 has been reported in cervical carcinoma HeLa, 7 chronic myelogenous leukemia 8 and NPC 9 cells. The tumorigenic activity of hnRNP K appears to be conferred through its ability to increase proliferation, 10 antiapoptotic effects, 9 clonogenic potential 8 and metastasis. 11 These functions may be due, at least in part, to the ability of hnRNP K to upregulate the c-myc, 8,12 thymidine phosphorylase (TP) 9 and eIF4E 10 genes through transcriptional or post-transcriptional regulation. However, the full spectrum of targets regulated by hnRNP K has not as yet been systematically examined.The acquisition of resistance to ...
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