Prenatal expression of d‑aspartate oxidase causes early cerebral d‑aspartate depletion and influences brain morphology and cognitive functions at adulthood
The free d-amino acid, d-aspartate, is abundant in the embryonic brain but significantly decreases after birth. Besides its
intracellular occurrence, d-aspartate is also present at extracellular level and acts as an endogenous agonist for NMDA and
mGlu5 receptors. These findings suggest that d-aspartate is a candidate signaling molecule involved in neural development,
influencing brain morphology and behaviors at adulthood. To address this issue, we generated a knockin mouse model in