micro RNA expression analysis in the prefrontal cortex of Fkbp5 deficient mice

Psychological stress is a risk factor for several diseases. In particular, stressor exposure has been linked with various psychiatric disorders. Since the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis plays a central role in the regulation of stress responses, it has been implicated in the etiology of stress related disorders such as PTSD. The HPA axis regulate synthesis and release of glucocorticoids and its dysregulation cause abnormal response to stress. FK506-binding protein 51 (FKBP5) is a co chaperone of HSP90 in the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) molecular complex and a key regulator of the sensitivity of GR. In this study, we profiled the miRNAs in the prefrontal cortex of FKBP5 knock out mice compared to the wild type. Subsequently, we profiled target mRNAs for differentially expressed miRNAs in the FKBP5 deficient mice using several tools for sequence-based miRNA target prediction such as miRDB, DIANA tool, miRmap and TargetScan. Gene ontology analysis suggested that differentially expressed miRNAs in the brain of FKBP5 deficient mice may be involved in neuron development, cell motion, endocytosis, and cell-cell adhesion. These results suggest that Nfasc could be a new target for understanding of the pathophysiology of PTSD. miRNA profiles of prefrontal cortex (PFC) from wild type and Fkbp5 deficient mice were generated by small RNA sequencing using Illumina HiSeq 2500.