Interestingly, the activity of the exon 17 promoter is altered by postnatal handling, which increases GR expression in the hippocampus. Handling selectively elevated GR mRNA containing exon 17; there is, for example, no effect on exon 110.85 Predictably, maternal care also affected the expression of GR splice variants: variants containing the exon 17 sequence were also significantly increased in the adult offspring of high-LG mothers (Weaver IGC et al, unpublished results). Thus, transcriptional activation of the GR gene in the hippocampus during adulthood is altered by maternal care over the first week of life.
