Transcriptional profile and quantitative proteomics revealed NGF-p75NTR-associated synaptic plasticity and heterogeneity for diabetic encephalopathy and the potential role of CoQ10 for diabetic induced cognitive deficits in mice

Abstract

Background

Diabetic encephalopathy (DE) is one of the diabetes complications, which showing heterogeneous at different stage in course of disease. CoQ10 is well-known for its neuroprotection effects in cardiovascular system. However, whether CoQ10 could modulate synaptic plasticity in DE remains unknown. This study aims to explore the cellular and molecular characteristics of CoQ10 and its potential role in diabetic induced cognitive deficits (DICD).

Methods

TMT-based quantitative proteomics was applied for investigating differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) among CoQ10 treated DICD, DICD and control (health) groups mice. Analysis of GO and KEGG pathway enrichment of DEPs among different groups. ScRNA-sequencing was applied for identifying heterogeneity among different groups; differentially expressed genes (DEGs), KEGG pathway enrichment were analyzed as well as Protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks were constructed. Western blotting was performed to validate the expressions of p75, BDNF in neurotrophin pathway and p-Akt in PI3K-Akt pathway, p-ERK as well as p-p38 in MAPK pathways among those groups.

Results

29 upregulated and 13 downregulated DEPs (db vs control, p < 0.05); 46 upregulated and 11 downregulated DEPs (db + CoQ10 vs control, p < 0.05) and 8 upregulated and 7 downregulated DEPs (db vs db + CoQ10,p < 0.05) were identified totally. 35 KEGG pathways were enriched by DEPs between DICD and CoQ10 treated DICD, including neurotrophing signaling pathway that had a crucial role in development, plasticity, and repair of the nervous system; Zfp369 that could interact with p75 and was upregulated after CoQ10 treatment among the down regulated DEPs in DICD; Further, scRNA-seq was applied, and the integrated analysis showed type IC spiral ganglion neuron with marker gene expression in cluster2,3,5 and 9, which were involved in synaptic plasticity regulation such as axon guidance, positive regulation of neuron projection development, negative regulation of BDNF binding and negative regulation basement membrane and dendritic microtuble formation as well as axoneme assembly.

Conclusions

CoQ10 treatment was very important in neural plasticity of DICD mice. It was the pioneering study to investigate DICD- related and CoQ10 treated proteomic changes and the correlated heterogeneity alterations between DICD and control. And also, NGF-p75NTR signaling pathways were significantly involved in synaptic plasticity regulation. The findings supplied the cellular and molecular evidence to clarify the potential role of CoQ10 in DICD, and combined drugs for diabetic patients in clinic.