Rat prefrontal cortex LC-MS/MS

The prefrontal cortex is greatly associated with a wide range of mental health illnesses including schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and autism spectrum disorders. It richly expresses neuroreceptors which are the target for typical and atypical antipsychotics. However as the precise mechanism of action of antipsychotic medications are not known, proteomic studies of the effects of antipsychotic drugs on the brain are warranted. In the current study we aimed to characterise protein expression in the adult rodent prefrontal cortex (n=5 per group) following low dose treatment with the atypical antipsychotic Risperidone or saline (control) in adolescence (postnatal days 34-47). The prefrontal cortex was examined by triplicate one hour runs of label-free LC-MS/MS. The raw mass spectral data were analyzed with the MaxQuantTM software. Statistical analysis was carried out using SAS Version 9.1. Functional and pathway analysis was performed with DAVID.nih and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis respectively and the top five most implicated pathways were found to be clathrin mediated endocytosis, the tri cyclic acid cycle, remodelling of epithelial junctions, rho family GTPase signalling and mitochondrial dysfunction.This brief report summarises the proteomic data obtained from the study described, adds to the current repertoire of data available concerning the effects of atypical antipsychotic drugs on the brain and sheds light on their biological mechanisms.