Temporally defined neocortical translation and polysome assembly are determined by the RNA-binding protein Hu antigen R

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1408305111
• Publication Date: 2014-08-26T03:20:35Z
• Authors: Matthew L. Kraushar; Kevin Thompson; H. R. Sagara Wije...; Barbara Viljetic; Kristina Sakers; Justin W. Marson; Dimitris L. Konto...; Steven Buyske; Ronald P. Hart; Mladen-Roko Rasin
• Keywords: Neurons; 0303 health sciences; Neurogenesis; Eukaryotic Initiation Factor-2; Neuroepithelial Cells; Mitosis; Neocortex; Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases; Models, Biological; ribosome; posttranscriptional regulation; profiling; GCN2; Elav; Corpus Callosum; ELAV-Like Protein 1; Gene Knockout Techniques; Mice; 03 medical and health sciences; ELAV Proteins; Neural Stem Cells; Polyribosomes; Protein Biosynthesis; Animals; Phosphorylation; Neuroglia; Gene Deletion

Significance The neocortex is an intricate and diverse cellular network in the brain, generating complex thought and voluntary motor behavior. Although recent attention has focused on the genome and transcriptome, our goal is to study the role of posttranscriptional processing and mRNA translation in neocortical development. In this work, we show that the protein components of actively translating ribosomes and their mRNA cargo in the developing neocortex depend on the temporally specific action of an RNA-binding protein, Hu antigen R (HuR). We further show that HuR is required for the development of neocortical neurons and structure. This study contributes to our overall understanding of how the regulation of functional gene expression influences neocortical development.