miR-92a Suppresses Mushroom Body-Dependent Memory Consolidation in Drosophila.

Tugba Guven-Ozkan, Germain U Busto, Jae-Yoon Jung, Ilaria Drago, Ronald L Davis

eNeuro 2020 Jul/Aug

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MicroRNAs (miRNAs) fine tune gene expression to regulate many aspects of nervous system physiology. Here, we show that miR-92a suppresses memory consolidation that occurs in the αβ and γ mushroom body neurons (MBns) of Drosophila, making miR-92a a memory suppressor miRNA. Bioinformatics analyses suggested that mRNAs encoding kinesin heavy chain 73 (KHC73), a protein that belongs to Kinesin-3 family of anterograde motor proteins, may be a functional target of miR-92a. Behavioral studies that employed expression of khc73 with and without its 3' untranslated region (UTR) containing miR-92a target sites, luciferase assays in HEK cells with reporters containing wild-type and mutant target sequences in the khc73 3'UTR, and immunohistochemistry experiments involving KHC73 expression with and without the wild-type khc73 3'UTR, all point to the conclusion that khc73 is a major target of miR-92a in its functional role as a miRNA memory suppressor gene. Copyright © 2020 Guven-Ozkan et al.

Citation

Tugba Guven-Ozkan, Germain U Busto, Jae-Yoon Jung, Ilaria Drago, Ronald L Davis. miR-92a Suppresses Mushroom Body-Dependent Memory Consolidation in Drosophila. eNeuro. 2020 Jul/Aug;7(4)