Inhibition of brain ST8SiaIII sialyltransferase leads to impairment of procedural memory in mice

In this work, we showed that pST8SiaIII-treated mice presented a significantly reduced level of ST8SiaIII mRNA in the cerebellum (p < 0.01) in comparison to control mice at 8 days after treatment. It is also noted that these levels returned to baseline values in the adulthood. Then, we evaluated behavioural performance in the T-Maze, a learning task that estimates procedural memory. At all ages, pST8SiaIII-treated mice showed a lower performance in the test session, being most evident at older ages (p < 0.001). Taken all together, we conclude that gene expression of ST8SiaIII is necessary for some cognitive tasks at early postnatal ages, since reduced levels impaired procedural memory in adult mice.