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Relationship: 746
Title
T4 in neuronal tissue, Decreased leads to Hippocampal gene expression, Altered
Upstream event
Downstream event
AOPs Referencing Relationship
Taxonomic Applicability
Sex Applicability
| Sex | Evidence |
|---|---|
| Male | High |
| Female | High |
Life Stage Applicability
| Term | Evidence |
|---|---|
| During brain development | High |
Many cellular and biochemical effects of thyroid hormones (TH) are mediated through regulation of gene expression (Oppenheimer, 1983; Bernal, 2007). Thyroxine (T4) is transferred from the serum to the brain (see KER: Thyroxine (T4) in Serum, Decreased leads to Thyroxine (T4) in Neuronal Tissue, Decreased), where it converted to triiodothyronine (T3), the level of which is highly controlled by deiodinases. T3 binds to thyroid receptors (TR) in the nucleus of neuronal and glial cells to control gene expression. It is generally accepted that the modulation of TR gene expression in the hippocampus, or any other brain region, must therefore depend on the presence of hormone in these tissues.
| ID | Experimental Design | Species | Upstream Observation | Downstream Observation | Citation (first author, year) | Notes |
|---|
| Title | First Author | Biological Plausibility |
Dose Concordance |
Temporal Concordance |
Incidence Concordance |
|---|
Biological Plausibility
Dose Concordance Evidence
Temporal Concordance Evidence
Incidence Concordance Evidence
Uncertainties and Inconsistencies
There are no inconsistencies in this KER, but there are uncertainties. Uncertainties remain in the relationship of neuronal TH concentrations and gene expression in the brain because of the lack of studies simultaneously examining brain hormone and gene expression in the same study. This stems from the technological challenges associated with measuring brain hormone and the sometimes-subtle changes in brain gene expression induced by manipulations of the thyroid system. In addition, there are also some physiological actions of T4 that are mediated non-genomically at the cell membrane (Davis et al., 2016). However, the exact role for the non-genomic effects is not well accepted or understood (Galton, 2017).
Response-response Relationship
There is only one study available to date that provides empirical data on both TH concentrations and measures of gene expression changes in brain. O'Shaughnessy et al (2018) demostrates dose-response relationships between brain T4 and T3 concentrations and changes in a variety of genes (e.g., Parv, Col11a2, Hr, Ngf) that were "statistically significant at doses that decreased brain t4 and/or T3". There was no quantitation of this relationship reported.
Time-scale
Known Feedforward/Feedback loops influencing this KER
Most of the data available has come from rodent models. The evolutionary conservation of thyroid receptors (Holzer et al., 2017) coupled with their role in TR regulated gene transcription in neurodevelopment, suggests that this KER may also be applicable to other species (see text above).