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Early life stress confers lifelong stress susceptibility in mice via ventral tegmental area OTX2.

Catherine Jensen PeñaHope G KronmanDeena M WalkerHannah M CatesRosemary C BagotImmanuel PurushothamanOrna IsslerYong-Hwee Eddie LohTin LeongDrew D KiralyEmma GoodmanRachael L NeveLi ShenEric J Nestler
Published in: Science (New York, N.Y.) (2018)
Early life stress increases risk for depression. Here we establish a "two-hit" stress model in mice wherein stress at a specific postnatal period increases susceptibility to adult social defeat stress and causes long-lasting transcriptional alterations that prime the ventral tegmental area (VTA)-a brain reward region-to be in a depression-like state. We identify a role for the developmental transcription factor orthodenticle homeobox 2 (Otx2) as an upstream mediator of these enduring effects. Transient juvenile-but not adult-knockdown of Otx2 in VTA mimics early life stress by increasing stress susceptibility, whereas its overexpression reverses the effects of early life stress. This work establishes a mechanism by which early life stress encodes lifelong susceptibility to stress via long-lasting transcriptional programming in VTA mediated by Otx2.
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