Endonuclease G is involved in neuronal apoptosis in mouse hippocampus

    WU Yongª²Fei, ZHANG Jianª²Hua, LI Shengª²Bin

    1State Key Laboratory of Forensic Sciences, Medical College, Xi¡¯an Jiaotong University, Xi¡¯an 710061, China, 2Department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio 45267, USA

    ¡¾Abstract¡¿ AIM: To investigate the involvement of Endonuclease G (EndoG) in excitatory amino acids induced neuronal apoptosis. METHODS: EndoG expression in the hippocampus of EndoG+/+ mice and EndoG+/- mice was analyzed by Western blotting. Kainic acid (KA) was taken to induce seizure behavior and excitotoxicity in EndoG+/- mice and EndoG+/+ mice. The terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferaseª²mediated UTP nick endª²labeling (TUNEL) assay was used to detect neuronal apoptosis in the hippocampus after KA treatment. RESULTS: We found that EndoG expression in the hippocampus of EndoG+/- mice was reduced more than 40% compared to that in EndoG+/+ mice. The reduction of EndoG expression levels in the hippocampus did not result in altered KAª²induced seizure severity in EndoG+/- mice compared to that in EndoG+/+ mice. However, the KAª²induced apoptotic cells in both CA3 and CA1 in EndoG+/- mice were reduced by about 35% in comparison with those in EndoG+/+ mice. CONCLUSION: The reduced expression of EndoG in the hippocampus of EndoG+/- mice leads to resistance to excitotoxicityª²induced apoptosis. ......