Short peptides stimulate serotonin expression in cells of brain cortex

Khavinson VKh, Lin'kova NS, Tarnovskaya SI, Umnov RS, Elashkina EV, Durnova AO. Bull Exp Biol Med. 2014.

Organ: brain-cognition · Type: in-vitro · Peptides: EDR, KED

In aging primary rat cortex cultures, Glu-Asp-Arg and Lys-Glu-Asp increased serotonin immunostaining; molecular docking is offered as a complementary TPH-promoter hypothesis, not a wet-lab binding assay.

Editorial summary of a 2014 short experimental paper in Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine. Culture plus modeling. Public pages cite PubMed only. Read the paper: PMID 24909721.

Methods

Primary dissociated cortex cultures from 3-month Wistar rats, grown in serum-containing DMEM. Passage 1 was treated as “young” and passage 14 as “old.” Cultures received saline, Glu-Asp-Arg (EDR), or Lys-Glu-Asp (KED) at 20 ng/ml at each passage. Serotonin was scored by immunocytochemistry (monoclonal antibody, peroxidase/DAB) with morphometry on a Nikon Eclipse E400 (five fields at ×200). Separately, the authors docked the two tripeptides against a CCTGCC motif they identify in the rat TPH (tryptophan hydroxylase) promoter.

Findings

The authors report that both peptides increased serotonin expression in aging cortex cultures, with a larger effect in young-passage cells. Docking assigned hydrogen-bond contact with d(CCTGCC) in the major groove; they take that as a possible epigenetic route to TPH and then serotonin. Binding energy for Glu-Asp-Arg was reported as higher than for Lys-Glu-Asp, which they say matched the immunostaining rank.

Docking is not a footprint or EMSA. This is a single in-vitro communication. It is not a clinical trial and not a cognition product claim. Follow the PMID.