Neurobehavioral deficits of mice expressing a low level of G127V mutant frataxin.

Authors

Daniel Fil
Robbie L Conley
Aamir Zuberi, The Jackson LaboratoryFollow
Cathleen Lutz, The Jackson LaboratoryFollow
Terry Gemelli
Marek Napierala
Jill S Napierala

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-1-2023

Original Citation

Fil D, Conley R, Zuberi A, Lutz C, Gemelli T, Napierala M, Napierala J. Neurobehavioral deficits of mice expressing a low level of G127V mutant frataxin. Neurobiol Dis. 2023;177:105996.

Keywords

JMG, Mice, Animals, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Iron-Binding Proteins, Protein Biosynthesis, Disease Models, Animal, Friedreich Ataxia, Trinucleotide Repeat Expansion

JAX Source

Neurobiol Dis. 2023;177:105996.

ISSN

1095-953X

PMID

36638893

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbd.2023.105996

Grant

This work was supported by Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (General Research Grant to J.S.N.), National Institutes of Health Na- tional Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R03NS099953 to J.S.N., R01NS121038 to M.N.).

Abstract

Friedreich’s ataxia (FRDA) is a neurodegenerative disease caused by reduced expression of the mitochondrial protein frataxin (FXN). Most FRDA patients are homozygous for large expansions of GAA repeats in intron 1 of FXN, while some are compound heterozygotes with an expanded GAA tract in one allele and a missense or nonsense mutation in the other. A missense mutation, changing a glycine to valine at position 130 (G130V), is prevalent among the clinical variants. We and others have demonstrated that levels of mature FXN protein in FRDA G130V samples are reduced below those detected in samples harboring homozygous repeat expansions. Little is known regarding expression and function of endogenous FXN-G130V protein due to lack of reagents and models that can distinguish the mutant FXN protein from the wild-type FXN produced from the GAA-expanded allele. We aimed to determine the effect of the G130V (murine G127V) mutation on Fxn expression and to define its multi-system impact in vivo. We used CRISPR/Cas9 to introduce the G127V missense mutation in the Fxn coding sequence and generated homozygous mice (FxnG127V/G127V). We also introduced the G127V mutation into a GAA repeat expansion FRDA mouse model (FxnGAA230/KO; KIKO) to generate a compound heterozygous strain (FxnG127V/GAA230). We performed neurobehavioral tests on cohorts of WT and Fxn mutant animals at three-month intervals for one year, and collected tissue samples to analyze molecular changes during that time. The endogenous Fxn G127V protein is detected at much lower levels in all tissues analyzed from FxnG127V/G127V mice compared to age and sex-matched WT mice without differences in Fxn transcript levels. FxnG127V/G127V mice are significantly smaller than WT counterparts, but perform similarly in most neurobehavioral tasks. RNA sequencing analysis revealed reduced expression of genes in oxidative phosphorylation and protein synthesis, underscoring the metabolic consequences in our mouse model expressing extremely low levels of Fxn. Results of these studies provide insight into the unique pathogenic mechanism of the FXN G130V mechanism and the tolerable limit of Fxn/FXN expression in vivo.

Comments

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/).