Autism-Related Transcription Factors Underlying the Sex-Specific Effects of Prenatal Bisphenol A Exposure on Transcriptome-Interactome Profiles in the Offspring Prefrontal Cortex
In this study, we investigated the effects of prenatal bisphenol-A (BPA) exposure on transcriptome profiles in the frontal cortex of the rat offspring. Transcriptome profiling by RNA-seq analysis of frontal cortex tissues isolated from neonatal pups prenatally exposed to BPA revealed that a list of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including Ntng1, Auts2, and Ankrd11 was dysregulated in a sex-specific pattern. The gene ontology analysis revealed that the BPA-responsive genes in the offspring's frontal cortex were significantly associated with ASD-related neurological functions. These results indicated that prenatal BPA exposure may increase the risk of ASD by impacting ASD-related genes in the offspring's frontal cortex. We conducted experiments using the frontal cortex from neonatal pups prenatally exposed to BPA or vehicle control (BPA treament; pooled 3 pups frontal cortex, vehicle control; pooled 3 pups frontal cortex). 10-week-old female rats were daily treated with BPA at the concentration of 5,000 microgram/kilogram of maternal body weight or vehicle control from gestation day 1 (GD1) until parturition. Total RNAs were isolated and cDNAs were synthesized. The transcriptome profiles were performed using a high-throughtput RNA-seq. Overall design: Expression profiling by high throughput sequencing