Songhai Shi, Ph. D., professor of Tsinghua University. His Labortory‘s research focuses on identifying the common commodities of neocortical circuits at both the structural and functional levels, and linking them with animal behaviors, with the ultimate goal of arriving at a circuit-and system-level understanding of neocortical operation and function under normal and disease conditions.

Title: Primary ciliary PKA activity regulates animal stress in the prefrontal cortex

Abstract:

New Cornerstone Science Laboratory, IDG/McGovern Institute of Brain Research, Tsinghua-Peking Centre for Life Sciences, Beijing Frontier Research Center for Biological Structure, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. China

Primary cilia are special cellular antennae emanating from vertebrate cell surface to sense and transduce extracellular signals intracellularly to regulate cell behavior and function. However, their signal sensing and physiological function in neocortical neurons remain largely unclear. In this study, we show that, in response to various animal stressors, neuronal primary cilia in the mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC) exhibit a consistent axonemal elongation. Selective removal of excitatory neuron primary cilia in the prefrontal, but not sensory, cortex leads to a reduction in animal stress. Moreover, treatment of corticosterone, the major stress hormone, elicits an increase in primary ciliary cAMP level in PFC excitatory neurons and a primary cilium-dependent decrease in neuronal excitability. Furthermore, suppression of primary ciliary protein kinase A (PKA) activity in PFC excitatory neurons results in a decrease in animal stress. Together, these results suggest that excitatory neurons in PFC sense and regulate animal stress via primary ciliary cAMP/PKA signaling.