Medizinische Universität Graz Austria/Österreich - Forschungsportal - Medical University of Graz
Gewählte Publikation:
Leber, S.
The Homer protein in psychiatric patients
Humanmedizin; [ Diplomarbeit ] Graz Medical University; 2015. pp.
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- Autor*innen der Med Uni Graz:
- Betreuer*innen:
- Haybäck Johannes
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- Abstract:
- In recent years there was growing interest on postsynaptic density (PSD) proteins in neuronal and especially central nervous system (CNS) research. One of the most important candidates of this region are proteins belonging to the Homer protein family. These scaffolding proteins have been intensively investigated in the postsynaptic site of glutamatergic synapses, but were also demonstrated to play roles in apoptosis of glia cells. The focus of this work lies on a special isoform of this protein family named Homer1a. This isoform has a dominant-negative function on the other Homer proteins and for this implicates a regulatory function for the rest of his family members. There is growing evidence for Homer proteins to play important roles in the pathogenesis of a variety of diseases. Especially psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression seem to be influenced in the context of this protein type. For this purpose immunohistochemistry was used to investigate Homer1a in brain tissue affected by these psychiatric conditions. This work aims to investigate levels of the Homer1a protein in subregions of the hippocampus and the cingulate gyrus of psychiatric patients. I here can demonstrate that levels of Homer1a vary in different subregions as well as different cell types. This observation counts for different disease groups compared to a healthy control group but also for comparison of the different disease groups with each other. Cingulate gyrus grey matter glia cells showed a decrease of Homer1a in the bipolar disorder group when compared to the control group and the major depression group. The same findings were made in the stratum oriens. Stratum lacunosum glia cells showed the same results only when the bipolar disorder group was compared to the major depression group. In stratum oriens interneurons Homer1a levels were increased throughout all disease groups compared to controls. Stratum lucidum axons had a decrease of Homer1a in the bipolar disorder group when compared to the control group. Taken together my results support current hypotheses about Homer proteins in the pathogenesis and the treatment of the investigated disease groups.