A comprehensive examination of dynamic gene expression changes in the mouse brain during pregnancy and the postpartum period

The developmental transition to motherhood requires gene expression changes that alter the brain to prepare and drive the female to perform maternal behaviors. Furthermore, it is expected that the many physiological changes accompanying pregnancy and postpartum stages will impact brain gene expression patterns. To understand how extensive these gene expression changes are, we examined the global transcriptional response broadly, by examining four different brain regions: hypothalamus, hippocampus, neocortex, and cerebellum. Further, to understand the time course of these changes we performed RNA-sequencing analyses on mRNA derived from virgin females, two pregnancy time points and three postpartum time points. We find that each brain region and time point shows a unique molecular signature, with only 49 genes differentially expressed in all four regions, across the time points. Additionally, several genes previously implicated in underlying postpartum depression change expression. This study serves as a comprehensive atlas of gene expression changes in the maternal brain in the cerebellum, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and neocortex. At each of the time points analyzed, all four brain regions show extensive changes, suggesting that pregnancy, parturition, and postpartum maternal experience substantially impacts diverse brain regions. Overall design: Libraries were prepared from three independent biological replicates, mRNA for each biological replicate was derived from a single mouse brain, with each mouse brain being used to collect all four brain regions.

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Ray S, Tzeng RY, DiCarlo LM, Bundy JL, Vied C, Tyson G, Nowakowski R, Arbeitman MN