Role of MSK in chromatin remodelling underlying stress-induced transcriptional induction in dentate gyrus granule neurons and behavioural adaptation

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Stress is part of everybody's every day life. We need to respond appropriately to stressful events and normally we learn from them to cope better the next time they are imposed on us. These learning and adaptation processes are taking place in the brain. These processes must work properly as improper functioning can cause illness such as depression and anxiety. However, we currently do not fully know how the brain learns from stressful events. We have recently discovered that after stress certain molecular processes ('histone modifications') are taking place in the nucleus of nerve cells which we think are crucial for the expression of certain genes necessary for the adaptation of these cells to the stressful event. These processes are triggered by certain hormones which are released within the brain or by hormone glands and that bind to receptors on the cell surface or inside these cells. The hormones do not trigger the molecular processes in the nucleus directly but do so via so-called signalling molecules. Our proposal aims to identify those signalling molecules and determine how these molecules act in order to gain insight into how nerve cells 'learn' from stressful events.