Author:

Abstract:

Neonatally induced excitotoxic ventral hippocampal (nVH) lesions [Lipska et al., Neuropsychopharm 1993] alter hippocampal input into the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and have an impact on PFC development. Anatomical and behavioral phenotypes of post-pubertal nVH lesion rats mimic several features relevant to schizophrenia [Laplante et al., J Neurochem 2004; Lipska, J Psych Neurosci 2004]. Several studies reported alterations in PFC expression of metabolic-related mRNA [Middleton et al., J Neurosci 2002] and proteins [Karry et al., Biol Psych 2004] in schizophrenia. In this study, Difference In Gel Electrophoretic patterns [Van Den Bergh et al., Curr Opin Biotechnol 2004] of mitochondria enriched PFC protein fractions obtained from adult nVH lesion rats and sham rats were compared. Proteins present in significantly different spots were identified using MALDI and nano-HPLC-ESI-Q-TOF mass spectrometry and protein annotations were assessed. The present observations may help to unravel protein dysregulation relevant or associated to schizophrenia-linked behaviors observed in post-pubertal nVH lesion rats. The organelle proteomic approaches applied here may increase the possibility to identify less abundant proteins dysregulated in schizophrenia and other diseases. This partial identification of proteomic changes in mitochondria, as well as in other organelles [Vercauteren et al., Eur J Pharmacol 2004, Amino Acids 2005], may contribute to the development of a reference database to investigate schizophrenia-linked protein expression.