Spatiotemporal expression and coexpression patterns of SRPK1 in the human brain: A neurodevelopmental perspective

Background: SRPK1 is a splicing-related protein that plays an important role in the development and function of the human brain. This article presents evidence that SRPK1 has distinct spatiotemporal expression patterns enriched in processes related to neurodevelopmental disorders across development.

Material and method: We used the BrainSpan growing mammalian brain transcriptome to evaluate the distribution of SRPK1 throughout the entire brain. RNA-sequencing data were gathered from 524 tissue samples recovered from 41 postmortem brains of physiologically normal individuals spanning early developing fetus (8 postconception weeks, PCW) to later life (40 years of age). Using the Allen Human Brain Atlas (AHBA) dataset, we analyzed the spatial gene expression of 15 adult human brains. Using Toppgene, we identified genes that exhibit significant coexpression with SRPK1.

Results: We found evidence that analyzing the spatiotemporal gene expression profile and identifying coexpressed genes reveals that SRPK1 expression is involved in various neurodevelopmental and somatic events throughout the lifetime.

Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of detailed maps of gene expression in the human brain for improved human-to-human translation and illustrate differences in SRPK1 expression across anatomical areas and developmental stages in healthy human brain tissue.