Modulation of NMDA receptor signaling and zinc chelation prevent seizure-like events in a zebrafish model of SLC13A5 epilepsy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
SLC13A5 encodes a citrate transporter highly expressed in the brain and is important for regulating intra- and extracellular citrate levels. Mutations in this gene cause rare infantile epilepsy characterized by lifelong seizures, developmental delays, behavioral deficits, poor motor progression, and language impairments. SLC13A5 individuals respond poorly to treatment options; yet drug discovery programs are limited due to a paucity of animal models that phenocopy human symptoms. Here, we used CRISPR/Cas9 to create loss-of-function mutations in slc13a5a and slc13a5b, the zebrafish paralogs to human SLC13A5. slc13a5 mutant larvae showed cognitive dysfunction and sleep disturbances, consistent with SLC13A5 individuals. These mutants also exhibited fewer neurons and a concomitant increase in apoptosis across the optic tectum, a region important for sensory processing. Further, slc13a5 mutants displayed hallmark features of epilepsy, including an imbalance in glutamatergic and GABAergic excitatory-inhibitory gene expression, increased fosab expression, disrupted neurometabolism, and neuronal hyperexcitation as measured in vivo by extracellular field recordings and live calcium imaging. Mechanistically, we tested the involvement of NMDA signaling and zinc chelation in slc13a5 mutant epilepsy-like phenotypes. Slc13a5 protein co-localizes with excitatory NMDA receptors in wild-type zebrafish and NMDA receptor expression is upregulated in the brain of slc13a5 mutant larvae. Additionally, low levels of zinc are found in the plasma membrane of slc13a5 mutants. NMDA receptor suppression and ZnCl2 treatment in slc13a5 mutant larvae rescued neurometabolic and hyperexcitable calcium events, as well as behavioral defects. These data provide empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis that excess extracellular citrate over-chelates the zinc ions needed to regulate NMDA receptor function, leading to sustained channel opening and an exaggerated excitatory response that manifests as seizures. These data show the utility of slc13a5 mutant zebrafish for studying SLC13A5 epilepsy and open new avenues for drug discovery.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".