Aberrant expression of collagen family genes in the brain regions developing under agonistic interactions in male mice

Summary As previously established, chronic agonistic interactions lead to the development of depression-like state under social defeat stress in the defeated mice and pathology of aggressive behavior in the winning mice. According to the numerous research data, these psychopathological states are accompanied by tremendous molecular and cellular changes in the brain. The paper aimed to study the influence of 20-day period of agonistic interactions on the expression mode of collagen family genes, encoding the proteins, which are basic components of extracellular matrix (ECM), in the different brain regions of mice using the RNA-Seq database. Most of the differentially expressed collagen genes were upregulated in the hypothalamus and striatum of chronically aggressive and defeated mice and in the hippocampus of the defeated mice. In the ventral tegmental area the most genes were downregulated in both experimental groups. It has been assumed that aberrant expression of collagen genes induced by long experience of agonistic interactions can indicate defects of ECM specific for brain regions in mice with alternative social experiences. This study first shows remodeling of molecular base in the ECM under development of experimental psychoneuropathologies. Corresponding authors: Kudryavtseva N.N., n.n.kudryavtseva@gmail.com ; Babenko V.N., bob@bionet.nsc.ru