Histone Serotonylation is one of the crazier epigenetic modifications - #Serotonin, the neurotransmitter, is shuttled into the nucleus and coupled to specific glutamine residues on the histone tails.
This happens not only in the brain, but apparently also in the placenta, this new paper shows:
Serotonin transporter-dependent histone serotonylation in placenta contributes to the neurodevelopmental transcriptome
Chan et al., J Mol B 2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2024.168454
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@moritz_negwer Wouldn't this have consequences for antidepressant use during pregnancy?
@hkl Very relevant question indeed, I suspect the group is working on this already.
They have a preprint that shows that in the adult (mouse) brain, SSRIs (fluoxetine) affect Histone Serotonylation. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a prominent mechanism of their antidepressant action.
Histone H3 serotonylation dynamics in dorsal raphe nucleus contribute to stress- and antidepressant-mediated gene expression and behavior
Al-Kachak et al., preprint on biorxiv 2023
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.04.539464v3