Investigating the role of maternal and paternal genomes in neuronal networks
“… Sleep-like features are differentially expressed in parthenogenetic and androgenetic neurons”
Genomic imprinting is a process that allows a selective expression of only the maternally or the paternally inherited allele of very few genes that recently emerged as important brain development regulators. Particularly imprinted genes control fundamental brain functions around 24 hrs, including sleep architecture, which is formed along with corticogenesis and cortical and subcortical brain circuits in early development. We study how imprinting controls corticogenesis, assembly of circuits during development, the circadian clock, sleep homeostasis and synaptic plasticity in mammals.
Thus, we focus on the specific contribution of the maternal or paternal genomes in the cortical and hypothalamic lineage development by both in vitro and in vivo approaches. We use single-cell and global network information to reconstruct the effect of sleep in a biological system. Sleep-like features in simplified in vitro systems are promising experimental tools and allow us to understand the precise regulatory mechanism of parthenogenetic (carrying a diploid maternal genome) and androgenetic (carrying a diploid paternal genome) neurons.
These mono-parental genome cell lines are used in three parallel models, including mouse 2D derived-neurons cultures, 3D cortical organoids, and grafted mice. By exploiting both molecular and electrophysiological approaches, we investigate the imprinting genes expression profile at single-cell resolution and the neuronal circuits’ spontaneous and evoked electrophysiological activity obtained with a high-density MicroElectrode Array system.
