GEO series

Sarcosine Is Increased in an Autism cohort and Drives Memantine-Reversible Behavioral and Gene Expression Changes in Young Mice

GSE329585 Mus musculus (mouse) RNA-seq (gene expression) 24 samples Submitted 2026/05/07 Platform GPL15103

At a glance

RNA-seq (gene expression) · mouse · 24 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: 24 samples: 6 × WT MICE, Vehicle treated, day 28 vs 6 × WT MICE, Sarcosine treated, day 28 vs 6 × WT MICE, Memantine treated, day 28 vs 6 × WT MICE, Memantine+Sarcosine treated, day 28Groups 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.

Summary (written by the submitters)

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition associated with alterations in metabolism and excitatory–inhibitory (E/I) balance, yet the functional consequences of specific metabolic changes remain unclear. From previous published reseach articles on metabolic studies of ASD individuals, similarly our metabolic study data identified a significant elevation of sarcosine, a glycine-derived modulator of NMDA receptor signaling.

Read the full summary ↓

To investigate its functional relevance, we examined the effects of chronic sarcosine administration in adult and young mice. Sarcosine induced anxiety-like behavior, impaired sociability, decreased grooming, and increased depression-like behavior, without affecting motor function. Most of these effects were seen only in young mice treated with sarcosine. These findings indicate a developmental vulnerability to sarcosine. Pharmacological blockade of NMDA receptors with memantine attenuated sarcosine-induced anxiety, social deficits, and depression-like behavior, but did not rescue grooming deficits or elevated corticosterone levels, suggesting both NMDA-dependent and independent mechanisms. Transcriptomic analysis of the frontal cortex revealed widespread gene expression changes induced by sarcosine, including pathways related to synaptic function and neurodevelopment, many of which were normalized by memantine. In contrast, mitochondrial-related gene alterations were not rescued. Together, these findings identify sarcosine as a metabolite elevated in ASD that can drive autism-related behavioral and molecular phenotypes in a development-dependent and partially NMDA receptor–dependent manner.

This dataset

Open GSE329585 in finder → Find more mouse RNA-seq datasets →

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.

Series matrix ↓

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 GSE329585_RAW.tar (it can run to tens of gigabytes).

All supplementary files ↗ Whole study · RAW.tar ↓

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.

Raw reads on ENA ↗

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 PRJNA1460265 and SRA study SRP696246. Searching any of these in the dataset finder brings you back here.

NCBI GEO page ↗

Study design

6 × WT MICE, Vehicle treated, day 28 vs 6 × WT MICE, Sarcosine treated, day 28 vs 6 × WT MICE, Memantine treated, day 28 vs 6 × WT MICE, Memantine+Sarcosine treated, day 28

Supports a between-group comparison across 24 samples.

How we read this: 4 replicated groups read from 24 sample titles; they account for 24 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

GSM9707005 WT MICE, Vehicle treated, day 28 - 1 WT MICE, Vehicle treate…
GSM9707006 WT MICE, Vehicle treated, day 28 - 2 WT MICE, Vehicle treate…
GSM9707007 WT MICE, Vehicle treated, day 28 - 3 WT MICE, Vehicle treate…
GSM9707008 WT MICE, Vehicle treated, day 28 - 4 WT MICE, Vehicle treate…
GSM9707009 WT MICE, Vehicle treated, day 28 - 5 WT MICE, Vehicle treate…
GSM9707010 WT MICE, Vehicle treated, day 28 - 6 WT MICE, Vehicle treate…
GSM9707011 WT MICE, Sarcosine treated, day 28 -1 WT MICE, Sarcosine trea…
GSM9707012 WT MICE, Sarcosine treated, day 28 -2 WT MICE, Sarcosine trea…
GSM9707013 WT MICE, Sarcosine treated, day 28 -3 WT MICE, Sarcosine trea…
GSM9707014 WT MICE, Sarcosine treated, day 28 -4 WT MICE, Sarcosine trea…
GSM9707015 WT MICE, Sarcosine treated, day 28 -5 WT MICE, Sarcosine trea…
GSM9707016 WT MICE, Sarcosine treated, day 28 -6 WT MICE, Sarcosine trea…
GSM9707017 WT MICE, Memantine treated, day 28 - 1 WT MICE, Memantine trea…
GSM9707018 WT MICE, Memantine treated, day 28 - 2 WT MICE, Memantine trea…
GSM9707019 WT MICE, Memantine treated, day 28 - 3 WT MICE, Memantine trea…
GSM9707020 WT MICE, Memantine treated, day 28 - 4 WT MICE, Memantine trea…
GSM9707021 WT MICE, Memantine treated, day 28 - 5 WT MICE, Memantine trea…
GSM9707022 WT MICE, Memantine treated, day 28 - 6 WT MICE, Memantine trea…
GSM9707023 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarcosine treated, day 28 - 1 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarc…
GSM9707024 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarcosine treated, day 28 - 2 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarc…
GSM9707025 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarcosine treated, day 28 - 3 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarc…
GSM9707026 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarcosine treated, day 28 - 4 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarc…
GSM9707027 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarcosine treated, day 28 - 5 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarc…
GSM9707028 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarcosine treated, day 28 - 6 WT MICE, Memantine+Sarc…

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Metadata from NCBI GEO, cached and refreshed periodically — the NCBI page above is authoritative. Downloads link straight to NCBI/ENA; nothing is proxied through BioTransfer.