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Early-life stress alters chromatin modifications in VTA to prime stress sensitivity

GSE324599 Mus musculus (mouse) RNA-seq (gene expression) 13 samples Submitted 2026/05/29 Platform GPL21103
At a glance

RNA-seq (gene expression) · mouse · 13 samples

What it is
RNA-seq (gene expression)Gene activity measured by sequencing. The summary does not mention single-cell work, so this is most likely bulk: one average per sample, the usual starting point for comparing groups.
Organism
Mus musculus (mouse)
Samples
13 samples: 5 conditions, mostly in duplicateGroups are read from the sample names, not from the paper. Check the list below.
Data you can get
A processed table (series matrix) and supplementary files from NCBI; the raw sequencing reads from ENA. Which of these hold counts depends on the study, so check the file list.
Paper
Early-life stress alters chromatin modifications in VTA to prime stress sensitivitybioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
Summary (written by the submitters)
Early-life stress increases sensitivity to subsequent stress, which has been observed at behavioral, neural activity, and gene expression levels. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying such long-lasting sensitivity are poorly understood. We tested the hypothesis that persistent changes in transcription and transcriptional potential were maintained at the level of the epigenome, through changes in chromatin.
Read the full summary ↓
We used a combination of bottom-up mass spectrometry, viral-mediated epigenome-editing, RNA-sequencing, patch clamp electrophysiology of dopamine neurons, and behavioral quantification in a mouse model of early-life stress, focusing on the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a dopaminergic brain region critically implicated in motivation, reward learning, stress response, and mood and drug disorders. We found that early-life stress alters histone dynamics in VTA, including enrichment of histone-3 lysine-4 monomethylation — associated with open chromatin and primed or active enhancers — and the H3K4 monomethylase Setd7. Mimicking early-life stress through postnatal overexpression of Setd7 and enrichment of H3K4me1 in VTA sensitizes transcriptional, physiological, and behavioral response to adult stress, while knocking down Setd7 ameliorates the impact of ELS. These findings link early-life stress experience to long-term stress hypersensitivity within the brain's dopaminergic circuitry, providing a mechanism by which early-life stress increases risk for mood and anxiety disorders later in life.
Published in
Early-life stress alters chromatin modifications in VTA to prime stress sensitivity
Geiger LT, Balouek JR, Barrett MR et al. · bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology 2025 · PMID 38559030 · doi:10.1101/2024.03.14.584631
This dataset
Download · which file do I need?

Direct links to NCBI and ENA, no account and no request form. Pick by what you want to do: take the small processed table to look, the supplementary files to re-analyse, or the original raw data to start over.

1 · Just have a look

Processed table

The series matrix: one table of values per sample as the submitters processed it. The smallest download, and it opens in Excel or R. Start here to see what the data look like.

2 · Re-analyse it

Supplementary files

The count tables and other files the authors uploaded. Take only the samples you need, or the whole study as GSE324599_RAW.tar (it can run to tens of gigabytes).

3 · Start from the raw reads

Raw sequencing reads

The original FASTQ files, straight from the sequencer, held at ENA. Large, and you align them yourself, so only choose this if you need to re-process the study from scratch.

What the files usually look like: For RNA-seq the counts are usually a table among the supplementary files (look for 'counts', 'expression', 'FPKM' or 'TPM' in the file name). The series matrix of a sequencing study is sometimes nearly empty.

Also filed as BioProject PRJNA1435924 and SRA study SRP682981. Searching any of these in the dataset finder brings you back here.

Study design
5 conditions, mostly in duplicate
VTA_gfp_ctrl_m ×2 VTA_gfp_sd_f ×2 VTA_gfp_sd_m ×2 VTA_setd7_ctrl_f ×2 VTA_setd7_ctrl_m ×2 VTA_gfp_ctrl_f ×1 VTA_setd7_sd_f ×1 VTA_setd7_sd_m ×1

Supports a between-group comparison across 10 samples.

How we read this: 5 replicated groups read from 13 sample titles; they account for 10 of them. These groups are guessed from the sample names, not taken from the paper, so check them against the sample list below before relying on them.

Samples in this study
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