The Vitamin A Derivative All-Trans Retinoic Acid Repairs Amyloid-β-Induced Double-Strand Breaks in Neural Cells and in the Murine Neocortex.

The amyloid-β peptide or Aβ is the key player in the amyloid-cascade hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease. Aβ appears to trigger cell death but also production of double-strand breaks (DSBs) in aging and Alzheimer's disease. All-trans retinoic acid (RA), a derivative of vitamin A, was already known for its neuroprotective effects against the amyloid cascade. It diminishes, for instance, the production of Aβ peptides and their oligomerisation. In the present work we investigated the possible implication of RA receptor (RAR) in repair of Aβ-induced DSBs. We demonstrated that RA, as well as RAR agonist Am80, but not AGN 193109 antagonist, repair Aβ-induced DSBs in SH-SY5Y cells and an astrocytic cell line as well as in the murine cortical tissue of young and aged mice. The nonhomologous end joining pathway and the Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated kinase were shown to be involved in RA-mediated DSBs repair in the SH-SY5Y cells. Our data suggest that RA, besides increasing cell viability in the cortex of young and even of aged mice, might also result in targeted DNA repair of genes important for cell or synaptic maintenance. This phenomenon would remain functional up to a point when Aβ increase and RA decrease probably lead to a pathological state.

Compensatory embryonic response to allele-specific inactivation of the murine X-linked gene Hcfc1.

Early in female mammalian embryonic development, cells randomly inactivate one of the two X chromosomes to achieve overall equal inactivation of parental X-linked alleles. Hcfc1 is a highly conserved X-linked mouse gene that encodes HCF-1 - a transcriptional co-regulator implicated in cell proliferation in tissue culture cells. By generating a Cre-recombinase inducible Hcfc1 knock-out (Hcfc1(lox)) allele in mice, we have probed the role of HCF-1 in actively proliferating embryonic cells and in cell-cycle re-entry of resting differentiated adult cells using a liver regeneration model. HCF-1 function is required for both extraembryonic and embryonic development. In heterozygous Hcfc1(lox/+) female embryos, however, embryonic epiblast-specific Cre-induced Hcfc1 deletion (creating an Hcfc1(epiKO) allele) around E5.5 is well tolerated; it leads to a mixture of HCF-1-positive and -negative epiblast cells owing to random X-chromosome inactivation of the wild-type or Hcfc1(epiKO) mutant allele. At E6.5 and E7.5, both HCF-1-positive and -negative epiblast cells proliferate, but gradually by E8.5, HCF-1-negative cells disappear owing to cell-cycle exit and apoptosis. Although generating a temporary developmental retardation, the loss of HCF-1-negative cells is tolerated, leading to viable heterozygous offspring with 100% skewed inactivation of the X-linked Hcfc1(epiKO) allele. In resting adult liver cells, the requirement for HCF-1 in cell proliferation was more evident as hepatocytes lacking HCF-1 fail to re-enter the cell cycle and thus to proliferate during liver regeneration. The survival of the heterozygous Hcfc1(epiKO/+) female embryos, even with half the cells genetically compromised, illustrates the developmental plasticity of the post-implantation mouse embryo - in this instance, permitting survival of females heterozygous for an X-linked embryonic lethal allele.