Abstract  It is well known that consuming alcohol prior to and during pregnancy can cause harm to the developing fetus. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is a term commonly used to describe a range of disabilities that may arise from prenatal alcohol exposure such as fetal alcohol syndrome, partial fetal alcohol syndrome, alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorders, and alcohol-related birth defects. Here, we report that maternal binge alcohol consumption alters several important genes that are involved in nervous system development in the mouse hippocampus at embryonic day 18. Microarray analysis revealed that Nova1, Ntng1, Gal, Neurog2, Neurod2, and Fezf2 gene expressions are altered in the fetal hippocampus. Pathway analysis also revealed the association of the calcium signaling pathway in addition to other pathways with the differentially expressed genes during early brain development. Alteration of such important genes and dynamics of the signaling pathways may cause neurodevelopmental disorders. Our findings offer insight into the molecular mechanism involved in neurodevelopmental disorders associated with alcohol-related defects.

Keywords   alcohol consumption; nervous system development; microarray analysis; calcium signaling pathway

Received   2015-2-6　　
Accepted  2015-4-21

Funding  This work was supported by the grants from the National Research Foundation of Korea (No. 2013R1A1A3011026 to K.H.J.) and the Korea government (MSIP) (No. 2011-0030049 to Y.G.C.).

* Correspondence address  Tel/Fax: +82-31-4005513; E-mail: [email protected] (Y.G.C.). Tel/Fax: +82-31-4003937; E-mail: [email protected] (K.H.J.)

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