Bristol Academics Discover Gene Targets of Stress Hormones In The Brain That Could Help Prevention And Treatment Of Mental Health Disorders

A team of Academics from the University of Bristol has in a new study made findings that would help lead to more effective strategies in the prevention and treatment of mental health disorders.

The study, supported by the BBSRC and a Wellcome Trust Neural Dynamics PhD studentship, was carried out by the Neuro-Epigenetics Research Group led by Professor Hans Reul and Dr. Karen Mifsud, in collaboration with Bristol’s Stem Cell Biology Group — Dr. Oscar Cordero Llana and Ms. Andriana Gialeli — and sequencing specialists and bioinformaticians at the University of Oxford. 

The study published today, August 6, 2021 in Nature Communications found a link between corticosteroid receptors – the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) and the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) — and ciliary and neuroplasticity genes in the hippocampus, brain region saddled with stress management, learning and memory.

The research team had the mandate to discover the genes MR. and GR interact with after exposure to acute stress across the hippocampus genome and to find out if any interaction would result in expression change and the gene functional properties.

Advanced next-generation sequencing, bioinformatics, and pathway analysis technologies were synergized to have a better understanding of how the glucocorticoid hormone action, through MRs and GRs, have an effect on gene activity in the hippocampus.

In the study, an unknown link between MR and a small like structure that protrudes from cell bodies known as Cilia was discovered. A good cilia function, though essential for brain development has the neutrons regulation in structure and function unknown.

It is hence believed that knowing the role of MR in cilia structure and function as it relates to neuronal development will help to unravel the role of cell structures in the brain and help solve cilia-related disorders in the future.

and GR interactions with genes involved in processes of neuroplasticity like neuron-to-neuron communication, learning and memory processes was also discovered by the formidable team, with some of the genes having being linked to the development of mental health disorders like major depression, anxiety, PTSD as well as schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

A glucocorticoid hormone dysfunction has been known to have very devastating effects on mental health in view of their imprints of the vulnerability genes, and in cognizance of this, it provided a new method that would explain the long-known involvement of glucocorticoids in the etiology of mental health disorders.

The findings will help in bridging the gap between the involvement of glucocorticoids in mental health disorders and vulnerability genes existence.  

 “This research is a substantial step forward in our efforts to understand how these powerful glucocorticoid hormones act upon the brain and what their function is”, says Hans Reul, Professor of Neuroscience in Bristol Medical School: Translational Health Sciences (THS:

“We hope that our findings will trigger new targeted research into the role these hormones play in the etiology of severe mental disorders like depression, anxiety, and PTSD”, He added,

Reference: “Distinct regulation of hippocampal neuroplasticity and ciliary genes by corticosteroid receptors” 6 August 2021, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24967-z