Aging and disease-relevant gene products in the neuronal transcriptome of the great pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis): a potential model of aging, age-related memory loss, and neurodegenerative diseases

István Fodor, Péter Urbán, György Kemenes, Joris M. Koene, Zsolt Pirger*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    Abstract

    Modelling of human aging, age-related memory loss, and neurodegenerative diseases has developed into a progressive area in invertebrate neuroscience. Gold standard molluscan neuroscience models such as the sea hare (Aplysia californica) and the great pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis) have proven to be attractive alternatives for studying these processes. Until now, A. californica has been the workhorse due to the enormous set of publicly available transcriptome and genome data. However, with growing sequence data, L. stagnalis has started to catch up with A. californica in this respect. To contribute to this and inspire researchers to use molluscan species for modelling normal biological aging and/or neurodegenerative diseases, we sequenced the whole transcriptome of the central nervous system of L. stagnalis and screened for the evolutionary conserved homolog sequences involved in aging and neurodegenerative/other diseases. Several relevant molecules were identified, including for example gelsolin, presenilin, huntingtin, Parkinson disease protein 7/Protein deglycase DJ-1, and amyloid precursor protein, thus providing a stable genetic background for L. stagnalis in this field. Our study supports the notion that molluscan species are highly suitable for studying molecular, cellular, and circuit mechanisms of the mentioned neurophysiological and neuropathological processes.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number9
    Pages (from-to)1-5
    Number of pages5
    JournalInvertebrate Neuroscience
    Volume20
    Issue number3
    Early online date24 May 2020
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2020

    Funding

    This work was supported by the National Brain Project, Hungary (No. 2017-1.2.1-NKP-2017-00002). Open access funding provided by Centre for Ecological Research. Bioinformatics infrastructure was supported by ELIXIR Hungary.

    FundersFunder number
    Centre for Ecological Research
    ELIXIR
    National Brain Project2017-1.2.1-NKP-2017-00002

      Keywords

      • Aging
      • cDNA sequencing
      • Lymnaea stagnalis
      • Mollusc
      • Neurodegenerative diseases

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