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  • Spatiotemporal protein dyna...
    Lapehn, Samantha; Colacino, Justin A.; Harris, Craig

    Neurotoxicology and teratology, 09/2023, Volume: 99
    Journal Article

    Valproic acid (VPA) is an anti-epileptic medication that increases the risk of neural tube defect (NTD) outcomes in infants exposed during gestation. Previous studies into VPA's mechanism of action have focused on alterations in gene expression and metabolism but have failed to consider how exposure changes the abundance of critical developmental proteins over time. This study evaluates the effects of VPA on protein abundance in the developmentally distinct tissues of the mouse visceral yolk sac (VYS) and embryo proper (EMB) using mouse whole embryo culture. Embryos were exposed to 600 μM VPA at 2 h intervals over 10 h during early organogenesis with the aim of identifying protein pathways relevant to VPA's mechanism of action in failed NTC. Protein abundance was measured through tandem mass tag (TMT) labeling followed by liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Overall, there were over 1500 proteins with altered abundance after VPA exposure in the EMB or VYS with 428 of these proteins showing previous gene expression associations with VPA exposure. Limited overlap of significant proteins between tissues supported the conclusion of independent roles for the VYS and EMB in response to VPA. Pathway analysis of proteins with increased or decreased abundance identified multiple pathways with mechanistic relevance to NTC and embryonic development including convergent extension, Wnt Signaling/planar cell polarity, cellular migration, cellular proliferation, cell death, and cytoskeletal organization processes as targets of VPA. Clustering of co-regulated proteins to identify shared patterns of protein abundance over time highlighted 4 h and 6/10 h as periods of divergent protein abundance between control and VPA-treated samples in the VYS and EMB, respectively. Overall, this study demonstrated that VPA temporally alters protein content in critical developmental pathways in the VYS and the EMB during early organogenesis in mice. •Early organogenesis stage mouse conceptuses were treated with 600 μM VPA using whole embryo culture for 2–10 h.•Protein abundance was measured with tandem mass tags which identified 1510 proteins with differential abundance in the treated EMB or VYS.•Protein abundance changes were dynamic across time and based on tissue (embryo vs. visceral yolk sac).•428 of the significant proteins have previous associations with VPA exposure in mice based on the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database.•Pathway results relevant to neural tube closure included convergent extension, Wnt Signaling, and cytoskeletal organization.