Examining the effect of stress during puberty and pregnancy-related hormones on the PVN transcriptome

Karissa N. Gautier*, Patrick J. Kane, Tracy L. Bale, and Kathleen E. Morrison

Presentation No.: 92

Assigned Category (Presentation Format): Neuroscience (Poster Presentations)

Student’s Major: Neuroscience

Women who undergo pubertal stress are at risk for future mental health impairments such as postpartum depression and altered stress responding. We have shown that allopregnanolone, a hormone produced during pregnancy, is both necessary and sufficient in producing a blunted stress response phenotype in pubertally-stressed mice. Separately, we found that pubertal stress led to upregulation of immediate early genes (IEGs) in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of pregnant mice. Here, we hypothesized administration of allopregnanolone would increase IEG expression in the PVN of pubertally stressed mice. Experimental group female mice underwent 14 days of chronic variable stress (CVS). All animals were given two separate injections of either allopregnanolone or vehicle treatment before collection. Gene expression in the PVN was measured using qPCR. We expect to see an increased amount of IEGs only in allopregnanolone-treated CVS mice, which would suggest that allopregnanolone is the component of pregnancy underlying the upregulation of IEGs. These results will provide novel insight into the mechanisms underlying female-relevant risk factors for stress dysregulation, a central endophenotype of affective disorders.

Funding: NICHD grant HD091376

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's SURE program (Rita Rio & Michelle Richards-Babb)