Msh3 and Pms1 Set Neuronal CAG-repeat Migration Rate to Drive Selective Striatal and Cortical Pathogenesis in HD Mice.

Modifiers of Huntington's disease (HD) include mismatch repair (MMR) genes; however, their underlying disease-altering mechanisms remain unresolved. Knockout (KO) alleles for 9 HD GWAS modifiers/MMR genes were crossed to the Q140 Huntingtin (mHtt) knock-in mice to probe such mechanisms. Four KO mice strongly ( Msh3 and Pms1 ) or moderately ( Msh2 and Mlh1 ) rescue a triad of adult-onset, striatal medium-spiny-neuron (MSN)-selective phenotypes: somatic Htt DNA CAG-repeat expansion, transcriptionopathy, and mHtt protein aggregation. Comparatively, Q140 cortex also exhibits an analogous, but later-onset, pathogenic triad that is Msh3 -dependent. Remarkably, Q140/homozygous Msh3-KO lacks visible mHtt aggregates in the brain, even at advanced ages (20-months). Moreover, Msh3 -deficiency prevents striatal synaptic marker loss, astrogliosis, and locomotor impairment in HD mice. Purified Q140 MSN nuclei exhibit highly linear age-dependent mHtt DNA repeat expansion (i.e. repeat migration), with modal-CAG increasing at +8.8 repeats/month (R 2 =0.98). This linear rate is reduced to 2.3 and 0.3 repeats/month in Q140 with Msh3 heterozygous and homozygous alleles, respectively. Our study defines somatic Htt CAG-repeat thresholds below which there are no detectable mHtt nuclear or neuropil aggregates. Mild transcriptionopathy can still occur in Q140 mice with stabilized Htt 140-CAG repeats, but the majority of transcriptomic changes are due to somatic repeat expansion. Our analysis reveals 479 genes with expression levels highly correlated with modal-CAG length in MSNs. Thus, our study mechanistically connects HD GWAS genes to selective neuronal vulnerability in HD, in which Msh3 and Pms1 set the linear rate of neuronal mHtt CAG-repeat migration to drive repeat-length dependent pathogenesis; and provides a preclinical platform for targeting these genes for HD suppression across brain regions. One Sentence Summary: Msh3 and Pms1 are genetic drivers of sequential striatal and cortical pathogenesis in Q140 mice by mediating selective CAG-repeat migration in HD vulnerable neurons.

Mapping brain gene coexpression in daytime transcriptomes unveils diurnal molecular networks and deciphers perturbation gene signatures.

Brain tissue transcriptomes may be organized into gene coexpression networks, but their underlying biological drivers remain incompletely understood. Here, we undertook a large-scale transcriptomic study using 508 wild-type mouse striatal tissue samples dissected exclusively in the afternoons to define 38 highly reproducible gene coexpression modules. We found that 13 and 11 modules are enriched in cell-type and molecular complex markers, respectively. Importantly, 18 modules are highly enriched in daily rhythmically expressed genes that peak or trough with distinct temporal kinetics, revealing the underlying biology of striatal diurnal gene networks. Moreover, the diurnal coexpression networks are a dominant feature of daytime transcriptomes in the mouse cortex. We next employed the striatal coexpression modules to decipher the striatal transcriptomic signatures from Huntington's disease models and heterozygous null mice for 52 genes, uncovering novel functions for Prkcq and Kdm4b in oligodendrocyte differentiation and bipolar disorder-associated Trank1 in regulating anxiety-like behaviors and nocturnal locomotion.

MicroRNA signatures of endogenous Huntingtin CAG repeat expansion in mice.

In Huntington's disease (HD) patients and in model organisms, messenger RNA transcriptome has been extensively studied; in contrast, comparatively little is known about expression and potential role of microRNAs. Using RNA-sequencing, we have quantified microRNA expression in four brain regions and liver, at three different ages, from an allelic series of HD model mice with increasing CAG length in the endogenous Huntingtin gene. Our analyses reveal CAG length-dependent microRNA expression changes in brain, with 159 microRNAs selectively altered in striatum, 102 in cerebellum, 51 in hippocampus, and 45 in cortex. In contrast, a progressive CAG length-dependent microRNA dysregulation was not observed in liver. We further identify microRNAs whose transcriptomic response to CAG length expansion differs significantly among the brain regions and validate our findings in data from a second, independent cohort of mice. Using existing mRNA expression data from the same animals, we assess the possible relationships between microRNA and mRNA expression and highlight candidate microRNAs that are negatively correlated with, and whose predicted targets are enriched in, CAG-length dependent mRNA modules. Several of our top microRNAs (Mir212/Mir132, Mir218, Mir128 and others) have been previously associated with aspects of neuronal development and survival. This study provides an extensive resource for CAG length-dependent changes in microRNA expression in disease-vulnerable and -resistant brain regions in HD mice, and provides new insights for further investigation of microRNAs in HD pathogenesis and therapeutics.

Integrated genomics and proteomics define huntingtin CAG length-dependent networks in mice.

To gain insight into how mutant huntingtin (mHtt) CAG repeat length modifies Huntington's disease (HD) pathogenesis, we profiled mRNA in over 600 brain and peripheral tissue samples from HD knock-in mice with increasing CAG repeat lengths. We found repeat length-dependent transcriptional signatures to be prominent in the striatum, less so in cortex, and minimal in the liver. Coexpression network analyses revealed 13 striatal and 5 cortical modules that correlated highly with CAG length and age, and that were preserved in HD models and sometimes in patients. Top striatal modules implicated mHtt CAG length and age in graded impairment in the expression of identity genes for striatal medium spiny neurons and in dysregulation of cyclic AMP signaling, cell death and protocadherin genes. We used proteomics to confirm 790 genes and 5 striatal modules with CAG length-dependent dysregulation at the protein level, and validated 22 striatal module genes as modifiers of mHtt toxicities in vivo.