Recently, Tao Wenjuan, Associate Professor of School of Basic Medical Sciences of AHMU, and Zhang Zhi, Professor of the Department of Life Sciences and Medicine of University of Science and Technology of China, published a research paper, MeCP2 Mediates Transgenerational Transmission of Chronic Pain, in the authoritative journal in the field of Neuroscience, Progress in Neurobiology (IF: 10.643), with Tao the first author and Zhang the corresponding author.
Chronic pain is characterized by familial aggregation and heredity. In this study, combining in vivo two-photon calcium imaging with neuromodulation, the authors established a mouse model of chronic neuralgia, and found that the increase of excitability of S1 glutamate neurons (S1Glu) in somatosensory cortex was a common feature of pain parents and offspring. Further studies showed that DNA methylation binding protein MeCP2 was found increased in S1Glu neurons of parental, F1 and F2 of neuralgia mice, which was positively correlated with the increasing excitability of S1Glu neurons. Transgenic or viral manipulation of MeCP2 expression in parental S1Glu neurons can significantly change the pain sensitization of offspring mice. Sequencing of a single S1Glu neuron showed that MeCP2 regulated the expression of multiple genes in the same way in the pain sensitive parental and offspring mice. This study revealed the epigenetic mechanism，which regulated the bad adaptability of neural circuit, finally led to the persistence of pain from the multi-level of “gene-molecule-cell”, which provided a new theoretical basis for understanding the persistence and obstinacy of pain.