Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0004352 (autism)
 32,579 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Irregular neuronal migration plays a causal role in mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and autism, but the very nature of the migration deficits necessary to evoke adult behavioral changes is unknown. Here, we used in utero electroporation (IUE) in rats to induce a locally restricted, cortical migration deficit by knockdown of disabled-1 (Dab1), an intracellular converging point of the reelin pathway. After birth, selection of successfully electroporated rats by detection of in vivo bioluminescence of a simultaneously electroporated luciferase gene correlated to and was thus predictive to the number of electroporated neurons in postmortem histochemistry at 6 months of age. Rat neurons silenced for Dab1 did not migrate properly and their number surprisingly decreased after E22. Behavioral tests at adult ages (P180) revealed increased sensitivity to amphetamine as well as decreased habituation, but no deficits in memory tasks or motor functions. The data suggest that even subtle migration deficits involving only ten-thousands of cortical neurons during neurodevelopment can lead to lasting behavioral and neuronal changes into adulthood in some very specific behavioral domains. On the other hand, the lack of effects on various memory-related tasks may indicate resilience and plasticity of cognitive functions critical for survival under these specific conditions.
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PMID:Behavioral Resilience and Sensitivity to Locally Restricted Cortical Migration Deficits Induced by In Utero Knockdown of Disabled-1 in the Adult Rat. 2696 7

Disabled 1 (DAB1) is an intracellular adaptor protein in the Reelin signaling pathway and plays an essential role in correct neuronal migration and layer formation in the developing brain. DAB1 has been repeatedly reported to be associated with neurodevelopmental disorders including schizophrenia (SCZ) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in genetic, animal, and postmortem studies. Recently, increasing attention has been given to rare single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) found by deep sequencing of candidate genes. In this study, we performed exon-targeted resequencing of DAB1 in 370 SCZ and 192 ASD patients using next-generation sequencing technology to identify rare SNVs with a minor allele frequency <1%. We detected two rare missense mutations (G382C, V129I) and then performed a genetic association study in a sample comprising 1763 SCZ, 380 ASD, and 2190 healthy control subjects. Although no statistically significant association with the detected mutations was observed for either SCZ or ASD, G382C was found only in the case group, and in silico analyses and in vitro functional assays suggested that G382C alters the function of the DAB1 protein. The rare variants of DAB1 found in the present study should be studied further to elucidate their potential functional relevance to the pathophysiology of SCZ and ASD.
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PMID:Rare single-nucleotide DAB1 variants and their contribution to Schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder susceptibility. 3329 5