RNA-seq analysis of rat neurons treated with shRNA-mediated Trank1 knockdown

Genetic analyses for bipolar disorder (BPD) have achieved prominent success in Europeans in recent years, whereas its genetic basis in other populations remains relatively less understood. We herein report that the lead risk locus for BPD in European genome-wide association studies (GWAS), the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs9834970 near TRANK1 at 3p22 region, is also genome-wide significantly associated with BPD in 5,748 cases and 65,361 controls of East Asian origin. In this study, we performed RAN-seq analysis of cultured rat neurons treated with shRNA knockdown of Trank1. Lentiviral constructs of two rat Trank1 shRNAs and a negative control shRNA were established to infect the wild-type rat neurons for 72h (n=3 per condition). Infection efficiency was estimated to be >80% and the mean expression of Trank1 was reduced by 43.4% and 35.7% respectively in cells infected with Trank1-shRNA#1 and Trank1-shRNA#2 relative to those infected with control shRNA.