Early life stress leads to gene expression down-regulation in prefrontal cortex [RNA-seq]
Early life stress (ELS) is associated with adverse mental health outcomes including anxiety, depression and addiction-like behaviours. While ELS is known to affect the developing brain by leading to increased stress responsiveness and increased glucocorticoid levels, the molecular mechanisms underlying the detrimental effects of ELS remain incompletely characterised. Rodent models have been instrumental in beginning to uncover the molecular and cellular underpinnings of ELS. Limited nesting (LN), an ELS behavioural paradigm with significant improvements over maternal separation, mimics human maternal neglect. We have previously shown that LN leads to anxiety like-behaviours in rats. Here we assessed gene expression changes induced by ELS in rat prefrontal cortex by RNA-sequencing. We show that LN leads primarily to transcriptional repression and identify a molecular signature of LN in rat PFC that is robust to the behavioural paradigm and replicable across rodent species (mouse and rat). Overall design: RNA-seq from prefrontal cortex of 5 control and 5 early life stress rats