Erbo Dong
Ohio State University, OH·Neuroscience
Stress during pregnancy can change how a baby's brain develops and may raise the child's risk of psychiatric problems later in life, including alcohol use disorder (AUD) and anxiety. It is still unclear how early stress leads to these outcomes, and the question is hard to test directly in people.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
Genetics
- Topics
alcohol use disorder
prenatal stress
early life stress
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Determine whether PP1a, an enzyme that promotes HDAC4 build-up in the nucleus, drives the ethanol preference, tolerance and anxiety-like behavior seen in adult mouse offspring of prenatally stressed mothers.
- Establish how nuclear HDAC4, a gene-silencing enzyme, blocks MEF2c-driven transcription of synaptic genes such as Arc and Homer1, in excitatory and inhibitory neurons isolated by FACS from mPFC, hippocampus and amygdala.
- Identify new synaptic genes controlled by the transcription factor MEF2c using CUT&Tag sequencing, which maps where proteins bind DNA, in neurons from prenatally stressed mice.
More about the research
This project uses mice to trace the molecular chain of events linking prenatal stress to heavy drinking and anxiety in adulthood.
Why it matters
Prenatal stress is linked to a higher risk of alcohol use disorder together with anxiety and mood disorders. By identifying a molecular pathway (PP1a-HDAC4-MEF2c) and new synaptic genes behind stress-induced drinking and anxiety in mice, this work could point to biological targets relevant to preventing or treating alcohol use and anxiety disorders in people exposed to early-life stress.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Hyung Nam
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport, LA·Neuroscience
Determine how chronic alcohol lowers neurogranin, a synaptic protein that tunes glutamate signaling, in the mouse medial prefrontal cortex, and test tolerance in mice with mPFC-specific Ng knockout or overexpression.
Rebecca Hofford
Wake Forest University, NC·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test how depleting the gut microbiome in adolescent versus adult mice changes fentanyl self-administration, a measure of how strongly the drug reinforces drug-taking.
Subhash Pandey
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Neuroscience
Test whether EZH2, an enzyme that adds methyl tags to histones, controls synaptic genes, electrical activity, synapse structure and anxiety-like behavior in the central amygdala of male and female rats during alcohol withdrawal, and examine these genes in postmortem human AUD amygdala.
The school
Ohio State University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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