Novel Nuclear Protein Complexes of Dystrophin 71 Isoforms in Rat Cultured Hippocampal GABAergic and Glutamatergic Neurons

The precise functional role of the dystrophin 71 in neurons is still elusive. Previously, we reported that dystrophin 71d and dystrophin 71f are present in nuclei from cultured neurons. In the present work, we performed a detailed analysis of the intranuclear distribution of dystrophin 71 isoforms (Dp71d and Dp71f), during the temporal course of 7-day postnatal rats hippocampal neurons culture for 1h, 2, 4, 10, 15 and 21 days in vitro (DIV). By immunofluorescence assays, we detected the highest level of nuclear expression of both dystrophin Dp71 isoforms at 10 DIV, during the temporal course of primary culture. Dp71d and Dp71f were detected mainly in bipolar GABAergic (≥60%) and multipolar Glutamatergic (≤40%) neurons, respectively. We also characterized the existence of two nuclear dystrophin-associated protein complexes (DAPC): dystrophin 71d or dystrophin 71f bound to β-dystroglycan, α1-, β-, α2-dystrobrevins, α-syntrophin, and syntrophin-associated protein nNOS (Dp71d-DAPC or Dp71f-DAPC, respectively), in the hippocampal neurons. Furthermore, both complexes were localized in interchromatin granule cluster structures (nuclear speckles) of neuronal nucleoskeleton preparations. The present study evinces that each Dp71’s complexes differ slightly in dystrobrevins composition. The results demonstrated that Dp71d-DAPC was mainly localized in bipolar GABAergic and Dp71f-DAPC in multipolar Glutamatergic hippocampal neurons. Taken together, our results show that dystrophin 71d, dystrophin 71f and DAP integrate protein complexes, and both complexes were associated to nuclear speckles structures.