Transcriptional profiles underlying vulnerability and resilience in rats exposed to an acute unavoidable stress

A complex interplay between gene and environment influences the vulnerability or the resilience to stressful events. In the acute escape deficit (AED) paradigm, rats exposed to an acute unavoidable stress (AUS) develop impaired reactivity to noxious stimuli. Here we assessed the behavioral and molecular changes in rats exposed to AUS. A genome-wide microarray experiment generated a comprehensive picture of changes in gene expression in the hippocampus and the frontal cortex of animals exposed or not to AUS. Exposure to AUS resulted in two distinct groups of rats with opposite behavioral profiles: one developing an AED, called “stress vulnerable,” and one that did not develop an AED, called “stress resilient.” Genome-wide profiling revealed a low percentage of overlapping mechanisms in the two areas, suggesting that, in the presence of stress, resilience or vulnerability to AUS is sustained by specific changes in gene expression that can either buffer or promote the behavioral and molecular adverse consequences of stress. Specifically, we observed in the frontal cortex a downregulation of the transcript coding for interferon-β and leukemia inhibitory factor in resilient rats and an upregulation of neuroendocrine related genes, growth hormone and prolactin, in vulnerable rats. In the hippocampus, the muscarinic M2 receptor was downregulated in vulnerable but upregulated in resilient rats. Our findings demonstrate that opposite behavioral responses did not correspond to opposite regulatory changes of the same genes, but resilience rather than vulnerability to stress was associated with specific changes, with little overlap, in the expression of patterns of genes.