Epigenetic Alterations Are Critical for Fear Memory Consolidation and Synaptic Plasticity in the Lateral Amygdala
Figure 1
Auditory fear conditioning regulates histone acetylation and DNMT expression in the LA.
(A) Schematic of the behavioral protocol. Rats were habituated to handling, trained with 3 tone-shock pairings, and sacrificed at 30, 60, or 90 min later. (B) Representative Western blots for acetylated histone (top), total histone (middle), and DNMT expression (bottom) at each time point. (C) Mean (±SEM) acetyl-H3 and acetyl-H4 immunoreactivity from LA punches taken from Naïve (n = 7) and trained rats sacrificed at 30 min (n = 8), 60 min (n = 8), or 90 min (n = 7). Here, acetyl-H3 and acetyl-H4 protein levels have been normalized to GAPDH levels for each sample and expressed as a percentage of the Naïve group. (*) p<0.05 relative to all other time points. (D) Mean (±SEM) total-H3 and total-H4 immunoreactivity from LA punches taken from the samples in (B). Here, total-H3 and total-H4 protein levels have been normalized to GAPDH levels for each sample and expressed as a percentage of the Naïve group. (E) Mean (±SEM) DNMT3A/3B immunoreactivity from LA punches taken from Naïve (n = 7) and trained rats sacrificed at 30 min (n = 8), 60 min (n = 7), or 90 min (n = 8). (*) p<0.05 relative to all other time points. Here, DNMT3A/3B protein levels have been normalized to GAPDH levels for each sample and expressed as a percentage of the Naïve group.