Häussler_et_al_2023_Molecular Neurobiology
Downregulation of Ubiquitin-Specific Protease 15 (USP15) Does Not Provide Therapeutic Benefit in Experimental Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Molecular Neurobiology, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12035-023-03692-2
Structural epilepsies display complex immune activation signatures. However, it is unclear which neuroinflammatory pathways drive pathobiology. Transcriptome studies of brain resections from mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) patients revealed a dysregulation of transforming growth factor β, interferon α/β and nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 pathways. Since these pathways are regulated by ubiquitin-specific proteases (USP), in particular USP15, we hypothesized that USP15 blockade may provide therapeutic relief in treatment-resistant epilepsies. For validation, transgenic mice which either constitutively or inducibly lack Usp15 gene expression underwent intrahippocampal kainate injections to induce mTLE.
We show that the severity of status epilepticus is unaltered in mice constitutively lacking Usp15 compared to wildtypes. Cell death, reactive gliosis and changes in the inflammatory transcriptome were pronounced at 4 days after kainate injection. However, these brain inflammation signatures did not differ between genotypes. Likewise, induced deletion of Usp15 in chronic epilepsy did not affect seizure generation, cell death, gliosis or the transcriptome. Concordantly, siRNA-mediated knockdown of Usp15 in a microglial cell line did not impact inflammatory responses in form of cytokine release.
Our data show that a lack of USP15 is insufficient to modulate the expression of relevant neuroinflammatory pathways in an mTLE mouse model and do not support targeting USP15 as a therapeutic approach for pharmacoresistant epilepsy.
Dataset
Here, we provide the dataset of intrahippocampal in vivo recordings and images of immunohistochemical stainings presented and analyzed in the paper.
Electrophysiology
Recordings from each mouse are presented in a separate folder. The folders are named after the individual mouse name (breeding number) and delta for conditional USP15 knockout mice (e.g. 146_delta) or con for mice with a floxed USP15 allele but without expression of cre recombinase, i.e. wildtypes (e.g. 154_con).
Within each folder, all recordings of a mouse are presented in the following fashion: Recordingdate_UCB_recordinghour_mousenumberi.smr, e.g. 031219_UCB_001_146i.smr
Recording date:
Each mouse was recorded to the following scheme:
5 consecutive days or recording;
2 days off;
5 days of tamoxifen injection (no recordings) to induce USP15 knockdown;
2 days off;
5 consecutive days of recording;
2 days off;
5 consecutive days of recording;
2 days off;
5 consecutive days of recording (the last five days were not done in all mice, so not all folders contain these).
Recording hour:
Each mouse was recorded for 2 or 3 hours per day, after one hour of adaptation to the recording cage. Each recording hour is stored in a separate file. For each mouse the two recording hours that were selected for analysis in the paper (no major artifacts or disconnection or other problem) are presented, which could be 001 and 002 or 002 and 003, or 001 and 003.
Mousenumberi
We present only the recording from the electrode implanted in the kainate-injected ipsilateral hippocampus (i) as these were used for the analysis in the paper.
.smr
All files are stored as .smi files (Spike2 format). Signals were amplified (1000-fold, PGA32, Multichannel Systems/SmartEphys), bandpass filtered (1 Hz-5 kHz) and digitized (sampling rate 20 kHz; Power1401 with Spike2 software, CED, UK). Mice were recorded freely moving with a miniature preamplifier (MPA8i), so recordings might contain any kind of behavior (rest, sleep, exploration, grooming etc.).
Histology
Histology data is summarized as .jpg images for all mice, all analyzed slices and all immunomarkers used (NeuN, GFAP, Iba1, CD68).
Histology_USPKO
This folder contains all analyzed images from kainate-injected constitutive KO mice, with one folder for each marker (antibody). Each image contains the number of the mouse and slicenumber. All images of one marker treated equally (same exposure, same adaptation). Images contain scalebars. A summary on genotypes and treatments is given in the file USP_consitutive_KO_withinfo.xlsx
Histology_USPDelta
This folder contains all analyzed images from kainate-injected conditional KO mice at the end of the EEG experiment, with one folder for each marker (antibody). Each image contains the number of the mouse and slicenumber. All images of one marker treated equally (same exposure, same adaptation). Images contain scalebars.A summary on genotypes and treatments is given in the file USP_conditional_KO_withinfo.xlsx
