In addition to being expressed in brain regions thought to play a role in ethanol response, there is evidence that GPC5 transcription can be modulated by ethanol. After discovering that ethanol-induced expression of Gabra4 in mouse cortical neurons is dependent upon the activation of heat shock factor 1 (HSF1) and its binding to an ethanol response sequence element located between exons 1 and 2, Pignataro et al. (2007) performed a microarray screening experiment to identify additional genes whose transcription is activated by ethanol via HSF1. By exposing cortical neurons to ethanol or heat and using microarrays to identify genes whose expression was altered by the treatment, they identified 50 genes that were transcriptionally upregulated in response to ethanol and ∼450 genes upregulated in response to heat. The authors highlighted the 9 genes that responded “dramatically” (upregulated 50% or greater) to both treatments, a list that includes GPC5. Additionally, we previously found that Drosophila dally expression was transiently increased following exposure to a sedating dose of ethanol (Kong et al. 2010).
