Co-location of HDAC2 and Insulin Signaling Components in the Adult Mouse Hippocampus

Abstract

As one part of epigenetics, histone deacetylases (HDACs) have been demonstrated to get into the neural events, including neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, and neurodegeneration through regulating acetylation status of target proteins to influence protein function and gene expression. However, the recent studies indicated that HDAC2, a member of HDACs family, played a role in insulin signaling pathway and synaptic plasticity. Here, we are concerned about whether HDAC2 was co-located with insulin signaling components in postsynaptic glutamatergic neurons (PSGNs) of the adult mouse hippocampus using double immunofluorescence staining. The results displayed that HDAC2 was present in PSGNs marked by N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor subunit 2B, in which major components of insulin signaling pathway such as insulin receptor alpha and beta and insulin receptor substrate-1 were also involved. Accordingly, we speculate that the interaction of HDAC2 and insulin signaling system in PSGNs observed in the present study may serve as a potential mechanism in memory formation. We hope this could provide a valuable basis for understanding the roles of HDAC2 and insulin on cognitive impairment of diabetes mellitus, involved Alzheimer's disease, which is also called type 3 diabetes recently. And this will also benefit to the treatment of insulin-related diseases in the central nervous system.