Transcriptome Study of Brain Nerve Impairment Induced by Pb Exposure

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 7; pp. 18206 - 18218
• Main Authors: Xue, Ling, Chen, Meng, Yan, Li-Cheng, Bo, Jian-Zhu, Wang, Jian-Bo, Zhang, Yan-Shu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Brain; Brain damage; Brain nerve impairment; Brain research; Cytokines; Diseases; Exposure; Genes; Heavy metals; Injuries; Injury prevention; Lead; Lead poisoning; Nervous system; Neurogenesis; Neurons; Rats; Repair; Sequential analysis; Toxins; transcriptome
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2896169

With the introduction of the global brain science program, the brain science and cognitive science are listed as one of the important research areas in China, the goal of which is to understand the function of the brain. In the human brain plan, the neurodegeneration and neurodevelopment in diseases and aging are one of the key areas of concern. However, lead is an environmental heavy metal neurotoxin, which can cause neurodegenerative diseases and affect brain health. At present, the mechanism of the lead-induced nervous system damage mainly focuses on the damage of lead to neurons, while the researches related to the repair of damaged nerve cells induced by the lead exposure have not been reported. The Transcriptome sequencing technology is direct detection of transcripts by the deep sequencing technology, which can more accurately measure the expression of transcripts, and is an inevitable link between genomic genetic information and the proteome of biological functions. In addition, the regulation of the transcription level is the most important regulation mode of organisms. Based on the characteristics of neurogenesis for nerve repair, the current study applied transcriptional sequencing technology to screen the differentially expressed genes in the choroid plexus of rats and to explore the changes in the expression of neurotrophic factors regulating neurogenesis in the choroid plexus of the lead-exposed rats. The results showed that the differentially expressed genes on choroid plexus of the lead exposed rats were related to neurogenesis. In the process of neurogenesis, the expression of nutritive and growth-promoting factors IGF1, EGFr, IGF1r, EGFr1, VEGF<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\alpha </tex-math></inline-formula>, and TGF<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\beta 2 </tex-math></inline-formula> decreased, which suggested that these cytokines may be involved in the process of lead exposure neurogenesis, which needs further experimental verification. The findings of this study provide a new target for the mechanism research and prevention and control measures of brain nerve injury caused by the lead exposure.