Impaired hippocampal plasticity and altered neurogenesis in adult Ube3a maternal deficient mouse model for Angelman syndrome

Angelman syndrome (AS) is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by mental retardation, seizures and sleep disturbances. It results from lack of the functional maternal allele of UBE3A gene. Ube3a maternal-deficient mice (Ube3a m-/p+), animal models for AS, are impaired in hippocampal-dependent learning tasks as compared with control (Ube3a m+/p+) mice. We first examined the basal expression of immediate early genes which expression is required for synaptic plasticity and memory formation. We found that basal expression of c-fos and Arc genes is reduced in the DG of Ube3a maternal deficient mice compared to their non-transgenic littermates. We then examined whether adult hippocampal neurogenesis, which likely serves as a mechanism toward brain plasticity, is altered in these transgenic mice. Neurogenesis occurs throughout life in mammalian dentate gyrus (DG) and recent findings suggest that newborn granule cells are involved in some forms of learning and memory. Whether maternal Ube3a deletion is detrimental on hippocampal neurogenesis is unclear. Herein, we show, using the mitotic marker Ki67, the birthdating marker 5-bromo-2′-dexoyuridine (BrdU) and the marker doublecortin (DCX) to respectively label cell proliferation, cell survival or young neuron production, that the Ube3a maternal deletion does not affect the proliferation nor the survival of newborn cells in the hippocampus. In contrast, using the postmitotic neuronal marker (NeuN), we show that Ube3a maternal deletion is associated with a lower fraction of BrdU+/NeuN+ newborn neurons among the population of surviving new cells in the hippocampus. Collectively, these findings suggest that some aspects of adult neurogenesis and plasticity are affected by Ube3a deletion and may contribute to the hippocampal dysfunction observed in AS mice.