Ethanol induced transcriptional and translational changes in Aldh1l1-EGFP/Rpl10a cortical astrocyte cultures

The role astrocytes play in brain development and function has come under increased focus as the diversity of roles they are involved in has become apparent. We have previously shown ethanol exposed astrocytes alter neuronal neurite outgrowth in an in vitro co-culture system and that ethanol alters the astrocyte produced extracellular matrix (ECM) in vitro, with similar alterations in vivo. Here we utilize the translating ribosome affinity purification (TRAP) procedure in Aldh1l1-EGFP/Rpl10a transgenic mouse primary cortical astrocyte cultures to transcriptionally and translationally profile the astrocyte response to ethanol. We found large differences in the total RNA pool in comparison to the translating RNA pool while the ethanol response within each pool showed a large degree of overlap. Comparisons to published datasets indicate the in vitro model used here are most similar to PD1-PD7 in vivo cortical astrocytes and the ethanol regulated genes showed significant overlap with models of chronic ethanol exposure in astrocytes and a model of third-trimester ethanol exposure in the hippocampus and cerebellum. These findings will further our understanding of the effects of ethanol on astrocyte gene expression and protein translation and how these changes alter brain development. Primary cortical astrocyte cultures from Aldh1l1-EGFP/Rpl10a mice, treated with 50 mM ethanol or control. Translating RNA Affinity Purification (TRAP) was run on the in vitro astrocytes to collect total RNA (input) and TRAP RNA.