title: Long-Term Transcriptional Consequences of Drug Exposure as Cues to Understand Vulnerability to Relapse: Advances and Perspectives.
abstract: Quitting drug abuse represents a true challenge for addicted individuals because of the highly persistent vulnerability to relapse. Identifying long-lasting, drug-induced alterations in the brain-including at the transcriptome level-that underlie such vulnerability appears invaluable to improve relapse prevention. Despite substantial technological developments and research effort, however, the picture of drug-induced adaptations provided by high-throughput transcriptomics remains frustratingly partial, notably because of methodological issues. Major advances were made, however, regarding the time course and specificity of long-term transcriptional consequences of drug exposure as well as the recruitment of small, noncoding mRNAs (or miRNAs [microRNAs]) that were previously undetectable. Most importantly, high-throughput studies have benefited from systems biology approaches and shifted their interest toward regulations within functional gene networks rather than individual changes. Such network-based gene discovery approaches have proven informative to delineate the physiological processes, cellular signaling pathways, and neuronal populations altered by drug exposure. Provided the high-throughput effort will be pursued, together with the development of adapted bioinformatics tools, addiction transcriptomics should progressively integrate data across multiple scales (from epigenome to protein), allowing a better understanding of the genetics of drug abuse and opening novel therapeutic trails.
authors: Physiologie de la Reproduction et des Comportements, INRA UMR-0085, CNRS UMR-7247, INSERM, Université François-Rabelais de Tours, IFCE, 37380 Nouzilly, France.
authors: Jerome A J
authors: JA
authors: Becker
authors: Physiologie de la Reproduction et des Comportements, INRA UMR-0085, CNRS UMR-7247, INSERM, Université François-Rabelais de Tours, IFCE, 37380 Nouzilly, France Julie.lemerrer@tours.inra.fr.
authors: Julie
authors: J
authors: Le Merrer
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics; D016739:Behavior, Addictive / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000628:therapy; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D032882:Comprehension; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000639:trends; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D012008:Recurrence; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000628:therapy; D013997:Time Factors; D014158:Transcription, Genetic / Q000235:genetics*