Involvement of Type 10 17β-Hydroxysteroid Dehydrogenase in the Pathogenesis of Infantile Neurodegeneration and Alzheimer's Disease.

Type 10 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (17β-HSD10) is the gene product playing an appreciable role in cognitive functions. It is the main hub of exercise-upregulated mitochondrial proteins and is involved in a variety of metabolic pathways including neurosteroid metabolism to regulate allopregnanolone homeostasis. Deacetylation of 17β-HSD10 by sirtuins helps regulate its catalytic activities.

Infantile Neurodegeneration Results from Mutants of 17β-Hydroxysteroid Dehydrogenase Type 10 Rather Than Aβ-Binding Alcohol Dehydrogenase.

Type 10 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (17β-HSD10), a homo-tetrameric multifunctional protein with 1044 residues encoded by the gene, is necessary for brain cognitive function. Missense mutations result in infantile neurodegeneration, an inborn error in isoleucine metabolism. A 5-methylcytosine hotspot underlying a 388-T transition leads to the HSD10 (p.

A Genotype-Phenotype Study of High-Resolution Nucleic Acid and Protein Analyses in Fragile X Patients with Neurobehavioral Assessments.

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is caused by silencing of the gene, which encodes a protein with a critical role in synaptic plasticity. The molecular abnormality underlying silencing, CGG repeat expansion, is well characterized; however, delineation of the pathway from DNA to RNA to protein using biosamples from well characterized patients with FXS is limited. Since FXS is a common and prototypical genetic disorder associated with intellectual disability (ID) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a comprehensive assessment of the DNA-RNA-protein pathway and its correlations with the neurobehavioral phenotype is a priority.

Stereological study of the neuronal number and volume of 38 brain subdivisions of subjects diagnosed with autism reveals significant alterations restricted to the striatum, amygdala and cerebellum.

Introduction: A total of 38 brain cytoarchitectonic subdivisions, representing subcortical and cortical structures, cerebellum, and brainstem, were examined in 4- to 60-year-old subjects diagnosed with autism and control subjects (a) to detect a global pattern of developmental abnormalities and (b) to establish whether the function of developmentally modified structures matches the behavioral alterations that are diagnostic for autism. The volume of cytoarchitectonic subdivisions, neuronal numerical density, and total number of neurons per region of interest were determined in 14 subjects with autism and 14 age-matched controls by using unbiased stereological methods.

Results: The study revealed that significant differences between the group of subjects with autism and control groups are limited to a few brain regions, including the cerebellum and some striatum and amygdala subdivisions.

Brain region-specific deficit in mitochondrial electron transport chain complexes in children with autism.

Mitochondria play important roles in generation of free radicals, ATP formation, and in apoptosis. We studied the levels of mitochondrial electron transport chain (ETC) complexes, that is, complexes I, II, III, IV, and V, in brain tissue samples from the cerebellum and the frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal cortices of subjects with autism and age-matched control subjects. The subjects were divided into two groups according to their ages: Group A (children, ages 4-10 years) and Group B (adults, ages 14-39 years).