MECP2 duplication causes aberrant GABA pathways, circuits and behaviors in transgenic monkeys: neural mappings to patients with autism

MECP2 gain- and loss-of-function in genetically-engineered monkeys demonstrably recapitulate typical phenotypes in patients, yet where MECP2 mutation affects the monkey brain and whether/how it relates to autism pathology remains unknown. Using expression profiles of 13,888 genes in 182 macaque neocortical samples, we first show that MECP2 coexpressed genes are enriched in GABA-related signaling pathways. We then perform analyses on multiple phenotypic levels including locomotive and cognitive behavior, resting-state electroencephalography and fMRI in MECP2 overexpressed and wild-type macaque monkeys. Behaviorally, transgenic monkeys exhibit hyperactive and repetitive locomotion, greater separation anxiety response, and less flexibility in rule switching. Moreover, decreased neural synchronization at beta frequency (12-30 Hz) is associated with greater locomotion after peer separation. Further analysis of fMRI-derived connectomics reveals widespread hyper- and hypo-connectivity, where hyper-connectivity prominently involving prefrontal and cingulate networks accounts for deficits in cognitive flexibility. To map MECP2 -related aberrant circuits of monkeys to the pathological circuits of autistic patients, individuals in a large public neuroimaging database of autism were clustered using community detection on functional connectivity patterns. In a stratified cohort of 49 autisms and 72 controls, the dysfunctional connectivity profile particularly in prefrontal and temporal networks is highly correlated with that of transgenic monkeys, as is further responsible for the severity of social communicative deficits in patients. Through establishing a circuit-based construct link between transgenic animal models and stratified clinical patients, the present findings with explicable biological causes are potentially amenable to translation for accurate diagnosis and evaluation of future treatments in autism-related disorders. One sentence summary We identify shared circuit-level abnormalities between MECP2 transgenic monkeys and a stratified subgroup of human autism, and demonstrate the translational need of a multimodal approach to capture multifaceted effects triggered by a single genetic event in a genetically-engineered primate model.