Behavioral analyses and ligand screening toward the identification of the physiological roles of an orphan metabotropic receptor Prrt3

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K15020
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 48020:Physiology-related
• Research Institution: National Institute for Physiological Sciences
• Principal Investigator: Chen I-Shan 生理学研究所, 分子細胞生理研究領域, 特任助教 (40757770)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 新規受容体

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Prrt3 is an orphan metabotropic receptor of family C GPCR and the physiological functions of Prrt3 are unknown. We have observed that Prrt3 is highly expressed in mouse brain. In the present study, we aim to identify the role of Prrt3. We created homozygous Prrt3 knockout (KO) mice and performed behavioral analyses. By Barnes probe test to analyze the spatial memory, we observed that the scores of Prrt3 KO mice in terms of (1) Latency (2) Error (3) Distance to the target hole were worse than that of wild-type mice. In the course of screening of a small-molecule library towards the identification of Prrt3 ligands, we failed to figure out its physiological ligands. Further experiments are necessary to solve the puzzle.

Free Research Field

イオンチャネル・受容体

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

我々のこれまでの研究から、マウスの脳におけるPrrt3の発現パターンやPrrt3遺伝子破壊マウスの空間記憶の異常等を観察した。これらの実験結果により、Prrt3は脳機能において重要な役割を果たしていることが強く示唆された。本研究の研究成果は、Prrt3の生理機能の理解を深めるとともに、脳の機能障害を引き起こす新規の分子機構の理解にも繋がると想定される。また、Prrt3はそれに関する病気の新規治療薬標的分子として働くことも期待できる。