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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 2|pp 2681—2699

Neuritin-overexpressing transgenic mice demonstrate enhanced neuroregeneration capacity and improved spatial learning and memory recovery after ischemia-reperfusion injury

Kexing Wan1, Fuxiu Mao1, Qiongqiong Li1, Limin Wang2, Zhiguo Wei3, Ping Wang4, Xinhua Liao5, Mengsi Xu2, Jin Huang1, Zemin Pan1, Chengtan Wang1, Jian Luo2, Rui Gao1, Shangquan Gan2
  • 1Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, Shihezi University, Shihezi 832000, Xinjiang, China
  • 2State Key Laboratory of Sheep Genetic Improvement and Healthy Production, Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural and Reclamation Sciences, Shihezi 832000, Xinjiang, China
  • 3College of Animal Science and Technology, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang 471023, Henan, China
  • 4College of Animal Food and Bioengineering, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang 471023, Henan, China
  • 5First Affiliated Hospital, Medical College, Shihezi University, Shihezi 832000, Xinjiang, China
* Equal contribution
Received: September 11, 2019Accepted: October 1, 2020Published: December 15, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202318

Copyright: © 2020 Wan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Acute ischemia-reperfusion (IR)-induced brain injury is further exacerbated by a series of slower secondary pathogenic events, including delayed apoptosis due to neurotrophic factor deficiency. Neuritin, a neurotrophic factor regulating nervous system development and plasticity, is a potential therapeutic target for treatment of IR injury. In this study, Neuritin-overexpressing transgenic (Tg) mice were produced by pronuclear injection and offspring with high overexpression used to generate a line with stable inheritance for testing the neuroprotective capacity of Neuritin against transient global ischemia (TGI). Compared to wild-type mice, transgenic mice demonstrated reduced degradation of the DNA repair factor poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase 1 (PARP 1) in the hippocampus, indicating decreased hippocampal apoptosis rate, and a greater number of surviving hippocampal neurons during the first week post-TGI. In addition, Tg mice showed increased expression of the regeneration markers NF-200, synaptophysin, and GAP-43, and improved recovery of spatial learning and memory. Our findings exhibited that the window of opportunity of neural recovery in Neuritin transgenic mice group had a tendency to move ahead after TGI, which indicated that Neuritin can be used as a potential new therapeutic strategy for improving the outcome of cerebral ischemia injury.