Gene expression signatures of SATB2-defficient vs wild-type adult neocortex

During CNS development, the nuclear protein SATB2 is expressed in superficial cortical layers and determines projection neuron identity. In the adult CNS, SATB2 is expressed in pyramidal neurons of all cortical layers and is a regulator of synaptic plasticity and long-term memory. Common variation in SATB2 locus confers risk of schizophrenia whereas rare, de novo structural and single nucleotide variants cause severe intellectual disability and absent or limited speech. To which extent symptoms in SATB2-related human pathologies depend on developmental or adult functions of the protein remains to be established. To characterize differences in SATB2 molecular function in developing vs adult neocortex, we compared SATB2 protein interactomes and SATB2-driven gene expression programs at the two ontogenetic stages by co-IP mass spectrometry and RNAseq analyses, respectively. Our results demonstrated that 1) SATB2 interacts with different protein networks at the two ontogenetic stages, with a switch from transcriptional repression towards organization of chromatin structure and 2) SATB2 determines differential transcriptional programs in neonatal vs adult cortex. Overall design: Analysis of neocortex transcriptomes of adult (3 month old) SATB2-deficient (Satb2flx/flx::Camk2a-Cre ) vs floxed mice

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Cera I, Whitton L, Donohoe G, Morris DW, Dechant G, Apostolova G