Effect of prenatal stress on proliferative activity and chromosome aberrations in embryo brain in rats with different excitability of the nervous system

Abstract

Stress during pregnancy affects the morphogenesis of embryonal brain, its structural and functional characteristics, and behavior of the progeny. Genetic mechanisms of this process remain unclear. Cytogenetic characteristics of neuroblasts were analyzed in 17-18-day embryos of rats selected by threshold excitability of the nervous system in health and after emotional painful stress during the third trimester of pregnancy. The strains differed by the effect of stress on proliferative activity and chromosome aberrations in cells of the future hippocampus depending on the strain-specific characteristics of the nervous system excitability. This effect is regarded as an important component of epigenetic regulation of neurogenesis and behavior.

Delayed developmental changes in neonatal vocalizations correlates with variations in ventral medial hypothalamus and central amygdala development in the rodent infant: Effects of prenatal cocaine

“…Additionally, maternal deprivation has been shown to decrease neurogenesis in the hippocampus [26] and to effect neural proliferation differentially in male and female offspring. Prenatal stress also differentially affects neural proliferation in male and female offspring [63;89;91]. These gender differences are speculated to coincide with behavioral differences in adulthood and imply that early life stress establishes sex differences in neural plasticity, contributing to alterations in the HPA axis [74].…”

Copy-number variation of housekeeping gene rpl13a in rat strains selected for nervous system excitability

“…Rat strains that have undergone a long selection for either a low threshold (LT) or high threshold (HT) of the tibial nerve (n. tibialis) to electric current have correlated values for direct measurement of excitability of the caudal nerve (n. caudalis), midbrain, and hippocampus. The LT and HT strains demonstrate interlinear differences in both in normal behaviors and in response to stress [13,14]. However, the genetic mechanisms for this phenomenon are not clear, and it has been proposed that CNV-specific genes with known functions can play a significant role [15,16].…”

Long-Term Effects of Prenatal Stress on the Characteristics of Hippocampal Neurons in Rats with Different Excitability of the Nervous Systems

“…Prenatal emotional painful stress (PEPS) was applied on day 16 of pregnancy (early third trimester). Females of both strains (experimental groups) were placed into a transparent chamber with grid fl oors and subjected to a single stress session by random combination of electrical pulses and fl ashes over 13 min [1]. After 24 h some females were decapitated, uterine horns were dissected, the embryos isolated and fi xed.…”