title: Region-Specific Disruption of Adenylate Cyclase Type 1 Gene Differentially Affects Somatosensorimotor Behaviors in Mice.
abstract: Adenylate cyclase type I (AC1) is primarily, and, abundantly, expressed in the brain. Intracellular calcium/ calmodulin increases regulate AC1 in an activity-dependent manner. Upon stimulation, AC1 produces cAMP and it is involved in the patterning and the refinement of neural circuits. In mice, spontaneous mutations or targeted deletion of theAdcy1gene, which encodes AC1, resulted in neuronal pattern formation defects. Neural modules in the primary somatosensory (SI) cortex, the barrels, which represent the topographic distribution of the whiskers on the snout, failed to form (Welker et al., 1996; Abdel-Majid et al., 1998). Cortex- or thalamus-specificAdcy1deletions led to different cortical pattern phenotypes, with thalamus-specific disruption phenotype being more severe (Iwasato et al., 2008; Suzuki et al., 2013). Despite the absence of barrels in the "barrelless"/Adcy1null mice, thalamocortical terminal bouton density and activation of cortical zones following whisker stimulation were roughly topographic (Abdel-Majid et al., 1998; Gheorghita et al., 2006). To what extent does patterning of the cortical somatosensory body map play a role in sensorimotor behaviors? In this study, we tested mice with global, cortical, or thalamic loss of AC1 function in a battery of sensorimotor and social behavior tests and compared them to mice with all of the whiskers clipped. Contrary to intuitive expectations that any region-specific or global disruption of the AC1 function would lead to similar behavioral phenotypes, we found significant differences in the degree of impairment between these strains.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201.
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Arakawa
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201.
authors.forename: Fatih
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Akkentli
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201.
authors.forename: Reha S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Erzurumlu
keywords: AC1; barrels; knockout mice; somatosensory cortex; thalamus; whiskers