As Tet proteins are responsible for the conversion of 5mC to 5hmC and regulation of the DNA methylation status in various tissues, PD0332991 cost which may have an effect on chromatin structure and gene expression (Guo et al., 2011b, Branco et al., 2012 and Cohen et al., 2011), we hypothesized that downregulation in expression of learning- and memory-related genes in Tet1KO brains may be

due to a direct role of Tet1 in the regulation of methylation of these genetic loci. As Npas4 has been shown to function as a critical upstream regulator of a genetic program that includes other activity-regulated neuronal plasticity genes, such as c-Fos, we decided to concentrate upon the analysis of the methylation status of the Npas4 in the brain of the Tet1+/+ and Tet1KO mice. We therefore performed sodium bisulfite sequencing of the Npas4 promoter-exon1 junction area, which contains 14 CpGs in the promoter region and 26 CpGs in exon 1. Sodium bisulfite sequencing of DNA from the control brains showed that the Npas4 promoter-exon 1 junction is methylated in both cortex (∼3.5% of CpGs methylated) and hippocampus (∼8% of CpGs methylated). We found that the same DNA region was hypermethylated in the Tet1KO mouse cortex (∼20%), compared to controls, and it was even more highly methylated in Tet1KO hippocampus (∼45%) ( Figure 4D). Thus, the loss of Tet1 appears to increase CpG methylation in the promoter-exon

1 region of Npas4 in selleck screening library the Tet1KO mouse hippocampus and cortex, which may result in its decreased expression. Consistently, applying Gluc-MSqPCR method, we found reduced 5hmC coupled with increased 5mC levels at the promoter Olopatadine region of Npas4 ( Figure S4A) in Tet1KO mice. There is little data

on the molecular mechanisms specifically regulating memory extinction (Lattal et al., 2003, Myers and Davis, 2007 and Radulovic and Tronson, 2010). One of the genes that have been demonstrated to be important for extinction is c-Fos ( Herry and Mons, 2004 and Tronson et al., 2009). As expression of a set of neuronal activity-regulated genes was strongly altered in the brains of Tet1KO mice, we hypothesized that such dysregulation may be responsible for memory extinction and synaptic plasticity impairment in Tet1KO animals. Since c-Fos and its critical upstream regulator Npas4 were among a few genes consistently downregulated in both cortex and hippocampus in naive Tet1KO mice, we decided to test their expression after memory extinction training. Six pairs of 4-month-old male Tet1+/+ and Tet1KO littermate mice were subjected to Pavlovian contextual fear conditioning followed by massed memory extinction training as described earlier. The groups of three control and Tet1KO mice were sacrificed 20 min after the training, and mRNA was extracted from hippocampal and cortical tissues to perform gene expression analysis.