Genetic defect may cause rare movement disorders

A Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)-led research team has found that a defect in transcription of the TAF1 gene may be the cause of X-linked dystonia parkinsonism (XDP), a rare and severe neurodegenerative disease. Symptoms begin around age 40 with dystonia-involuntary muscle contractions that can force the body into abnormal, sometimes twisted positions and eventually proceed to Parkinson's-like symptoms, such as slowness of movement and a shuffling gait. Patients become progressively more disabled as the disease progresses and often die from complications such as infections or pneumonia.

Individuals with XDP share seven DNA sequence changes, which cluster within a region of the X-chromosome that includes the TAF1 gene. These sequence changes have always appeared to be inherited together. The largest genomics study ever performed for XDP, analyzing a total of 792 DNA samples from individuals with XDP and their unaffected relatives, as well as historical samples from studies dating back to the initial descriptions of the disease.

The analysis of these samples revealed a far greater genetic diversity among XDP patients than was previously known. While most shared a total of 54 unique sequence changes in a collection of variants known as a haplotype, in some individuals the haplotype had been broken apart due to genetic recombination. By comparing these recombination events, it was possible to narrow the disease-causing genomic segment to a smaller region that contained only the TAF1 gene.

Researchers reprogramed skin cells from patients with XDP and their healthy relatives back into stem cells, which differentiated into neural progenitor cells and then mature neurons. The team used RNA sequencing to characterize TAF1 expression patterns and found a defect in how the DNA sequence is transcribed into RNA in neural cells from XDP patients. In those cells, a portion of the TAF1 RNA appeared to terminate prematurely, which reduced expression of the full-length RNA. The truncated TAF1 RNA ended close to a known XDP-specific sequence variants - a large DNA insertion known as a retrotransposon.

 To determine whether the retrotransposon caused the transcriptional defect, t used genome they used editing tools to remove the sequence, which restored RNA transcription and normalized TAF1 expression. In a separate study, they analyzed the sequence of the retrotransposon in patients with XDP and found that it contained a segment of repetitive DNA that was longer in patients who developed symptoms at an earlier age and shorter in those whose symptoms appeared later.
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How brain learns new skills

The skills needed to perform any activities are stored in the brain as procedural memories. Researchers from the Gladstone Institutes uncovered how a special type of neuron improves the efficiency of this type of learning. The scientists wanted to show how the specialized brain cells, called fast-spiking interneurons, cause movement disorders, such as Tourette's syndrome, dystonia, and dyskinesia.

The team, led by Gladstone Senior Investigator Anatol C. Kreitzer, PhD, was trying to understand the basic mechanisms of the basal ganglia, which are a group of interconnected neurons in the brain that control movement and are associated with decision-making and action selection. Fast-spiking interneurons represent only about 1 percent of the neurons in that brain region, but are known to have an outsized role in organizing the circuit activity.

The leading hypothesis in the field was that these interneurons were involved in motor control, and that their loss might be related to movement disorders. They discovered that the interneurons are much more important for learning and memory, and potentially more closely related to psychiatric disease than movement disorders.

The team found that the interneurons play a fundamental role in brain plasticity, which is the brain's ability to strengthen or weaken connections between neurons. By doing so, the brain can store information and procedural memory.

The fast-spiking interneurons act like gatekeepers for plasticity. They restrict when plasticity can occur, meaning that they can prevent changes in the connection strength between neurons. This is crucial for learning and memory and, more specifically, for enabling the basal ganglia to remember how to perform tasks.

In other parts of the brain, these same neurons are known to be crucial for processing sensory input, such as vision or touch, and their dysfunction is associated with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Fast-spiking interneurons could be a key factor in controlling the efficiency of the learning process in those systems as well.
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