Cerebellar Granule Neuron Temporal-NFI Microarray Data

Dendrite and synapse development are critical for establishing appropriate neuronal circuits, and disrupted timing of these events can alter connectivity leading to disordered neural function. In early postnatal development of cerebellar granule neurons (CGNs), the expression of many genes is temporally regulated. Further, NFI (Nuclear Factor I) proteins have been shown to play important roles in the regulation of gene expression in developing CGNs. To identify NFI-regulated genome-wide targets involved in late maturation of mouse CGNs, we performed two groups of microarray expression analysis: (1) temporal expression arrays using 1.5 and 6 day cultures of mouse CGNs representing immature and more mature CGNs, respectively, which identified 844 Temporal-Up or Down genes; and (2) NFI-regulated genes in 6 day CGN cultures that were infected at the time of plating with lentiviral vectors expressing either NFI dominant repressor (NFI-EnR) or EnR control protein. This identified 686 NFI-Up (NFI-EnR down-regulated) or NFI-Down (NFI-EnR up-regulated) genes. Overlap analysis identified 212 temporal genes that were regulated by NFI. These results indicated that NFI plays a pivotal role in the regulation of late CGN maturation. For temporal arrays, mouse CGN progenitors were purified from P6 mouse cerebellum and cultured for either 1.5 or 6 days. Three biological replicates were analyzed for each time point. For NFI arrays, CGN progenitors from P6 mice were transduced upon plating with either NFI-EnR or EnR control lentivirus and cultured 6 days. Four pairs of biological replicates were performed.