RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Unsupervised Network Analysis of the Plastic Supraoptic Nucleus Transcriptome Predicts Caprin2 Regulatory Interactions JF eneuro JO eNeuro FD Society for Neuroscience SP ENEURO.0243-17.2017 DO 10.1523/ENEURO.0243-17.2017 VO 4 IS 6 A1 Su-Yi Loh A1 Thomas Jahans-Price A1 Michael P. Greenwood A1 Mingkwan Greenwood A1 See-Ziau Hoe A1 Agnieszka Konopacka A1 Colin Campbell A1 David Murphy A1 Charles C. T. Hindmarch YR 2017 UL http://www.eneuro.org/content/4/6/ENEURO.0243-17.2017.abstract AB The supraoptic nucleus (SON) is a group of neurons in the hypothalamus responsible for the synthesis and secretion of the peptide hormones vasopressin and oxytocin. Following physiological cues, such as dehydration, salt-loading and lactation, the SON undergoes a function related plasticity that we have previously described in the rat at the transcriptome level. Using the unsupervised graphical lasso (Glasso) algorithm, we reconstructed a putative network from 500 plastic SON genes in which genes are the nodes and the edges are the inferred interactions. The most active nodal gene identified within the network was Caprin2. Caprin2 encodes an RNA-binding protein that we have previously shown to be vital for the functioning of osmoregulatory neuroendocrine neurons in the SON of the rat hypothalamus. To test the validity of the Glasso network, we either overexpressed or knocked down Caprin2 transcripts in differentiated rat pheochromocytoma PC12 cells and showed that these manipulations had significant opposite effects on the levels of putative target mRNAs. These studies suggest that the predicative power of the Glasso algorithm within an in vivo system is accurate, and identifies biological targets that may be important to the functional plasticity of the SON.