Expression of Cholinergic Markers and Characterization of Splice Variants during Ontogenesis of Rat Dorsal Root Ganglia Neurons

Dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons synthesize acetylcholine (ACh), in addition to their peptidergic nature. They also release ACh and are cholinoceptive, as they express cholinergic receptors. During gangliogenesis, ACh plays an important role in neuronal differentiation, modulating neuritic outgrowt...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of molecular sciences 2021-05, Vol.22 (11), p.5499
Main Authors: Corsetti, Veronica, Perrone-Capano, Carla, Salazar Intriago, Michael Sebastian, Botticelli, Elisabetta, Poiana, Giancarlo, Augusti-Tocco, Gabriella, Biagioni, Stefano, Tata, Ada Maria
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
acetylcholine
choline acetyltransferase
cholinergic locus
Communication
sensory neurons
splice variants
vesicular acetylcholine transporter
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons synthesize acetylcholine (ACh), in addition to their peptidergic nature. They also release ACh and are cholinoceptive, as they express cholinergic receptors. During gangliogenesis, ACh plays an important role in neuronal differentiation, modulating neuritic outgrowth and neurospecific gene expression. Starting from these data, we studied the expression of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and vesicular ACh transporter (VAChT) expression in rat DRG neurons. ChAT and VAChT genes are arranged in a “cholinergic locus”, and several splice variants have been described. Using selective primers, we characterized splice variants of these cholinergic markers, demonstrating that rat DRGs express R1, R2, M, and N variants for ChAT and V1, V2, R1, and R2 splice variants for VAChT. Moreover, by RT-PCR analysis, we observed a progressive decrease in ChAT and VAChT transcripts from the late embryonic developmental stage (E18) to postnatal P2 and P15 and in the adult DRG. Interestingly, Western blot analyses and activity assays demonstrated that ChAT levels significantly increased during DRG ontogenesis. The modulated expression of different ChAT and VAChT splice variants during development suggests a possible differential regulation of cholinergic marker expression in sensory neurons and confirms multiple roles for ACh in DRG neurons, both in the embryo stage and postnatally.
ISSN:1422-0067
1661-6596
1422-0067
DOI:10.3390/ijms22115499