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Hammond, Timothy

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Hammond, Timothy

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20162

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Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.c7be7b51-4b2e-4ae7-bf2e-aec07a542f3c

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    Schizophrenia risk from complex variation of complement component 4
    (2016) Sekar, Aswin; Rosen, Allison; de Rivera, Heather; Bell, Avery; Hammond, Timothy; Kamitaki, Nolan; Tooley, Katherine; Presumey, Jessy; Baum, Matt; Van Doren, Vanessa; Genovese, Giulio; Rose, Samuel A.; Handsaker, Robert; Daly, Mark; Carroll, Michael C.; Stevens, Beth; McCarroll, Steven
    Schizophrenia is a heritable brain illness with unknown pathogenic mechanisms. Schizophrenia’s strongest genetic association at a population level involves variation in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) locus, but the genes and molecular mechanisms accounting for this have been challenging to recognize. We show here that schizophrenia’s association with the MHC locus arises in substantial part from many structurally diverse alleles of the complement component 4 (C4) genes. We found that these alleles promoted widely varying levels of C4A and C4B expression and associated with schizophrenia in proportion to their tendency to promote greater expression of C4A in the brain. Human C4 protein localized at neuronal synapses, dendrites, axons, and cell bodies. In mice, C4 mediated synapse elimination during postnatal development. These results implicate excessive complement activity in the development of schizophrenia and may help explain the reduced numbers of synapses in the brains of individuals affected with schizophrenia.
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    Microglia contribute to circuit defects in Mecp2 null mice independent of microglia-specific loss of Mecp2 expression
    (eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd, 2016) Schafer, Dorothy P; Heller, Christopher T; Gunner, Georgia; Heller, Molly; Gordon, Christopher; Hammond, Timothy; Wolf, Yochai; Jung, Steffen; Stevens, Beth
    Microglia, the resident CNS macrophages, have been implicated in the pathogenesis of Rett Syndrome (RTT), an X-linked neurodevelopmental disorder. However, the mechanism by which microglia contribute to the disorder is unclear and recent data suggest that microglia do not play a causative role. Here, we use the retinogeniculate system to determine if and how microglia contribute to pathogenesis in a RTT mouse model, the Mecp2 null mouse (Mecp2tm1.1Bird/y). We demonstrate that microglia contribute to pathogenesis by excessively engulfing, thereby eliminating, presynaptic inputs at end stages of disease (≥P56 Mecp2 null mice) concomitant with synapse loss. Furthermore, loss or gain of Mecp2 expression specifically in microglia (Cx3cr1CreER;Mecp2fl/yor Cx3cr1CreER; Mecp2LSL/y) had little effect on excessive engulfment, synapse loss, or phenotypic abnormalities. Taken together, our data suggest that microglia contribute to end stages of disease by dismantling neural circuits rendered vulnerable by loss of Mecp2 in other CNS cell types. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15224.001