Autophagy and Tau Protein.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Hamano T
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8303176 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) is a pivotal transcription factor in the defence against oxidative stress. Here we provide evidence that activation of the Nrf2 pathway reduces the levels of phosphorylated tau by induction of an autophagy adaptor protein NDP52 (also known as CALCOCO2) in neurons. The expression of NDP52, which we show has three antioxidant response elements (AREs) in its promoter region, is strongly induced by Nrf2, and its overexpression facilitates clearance of phosphorylated tau in the presence of an autophagy stimulator. In Nrf2-knockout mice, phosphorylated and sarkosyl-insoluble tau accumulates in the brains concurrent with decreased levels of NDP52. Moreover, NDP52 associates with phosphorylated tau from brain cortical samples of Alzheimer disease cases, and the amount of phosphorylated tau in sarkosyl-insoluble fractions is inversely proportional to that of NDP52. These results suggest that NDP52 plays a key role in autophagy-mediated degradation of phosphorylated tau in vivo.
| S-EPMC3990284 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Genome-wide association studies have identified several loci associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), including proteins involved in endocytic trafficking such as PICALM/CALM (phosphatidylinositol binding clathrin assembly protein). It is unclear how these loci may contribute to AD pathology. Here we show that CALM modulates autophagy and alters clearance of tau, a protein which is a known autophagy substrate and which is causatively linked to AD, both in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, altered CALM expression exacerbates tau-mediated toxicity in zebrafish transgenic models. CALM influences autophagy by regulating the endocytosis of SNAREs, such as VAMP2, VAMP3 and VAMP8, which have diverse effects on different stages of the autophagy pathway, from autophagosome formation to autophagosome degradation. This study suggests that the AD genetic risk factor CALM modulates autophagy, and this may affect disease in a number of ways including modulation of tau turnover.
| S-EPMC4199285 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Disrupted homeostasis of the microtubule binding protein tau is a shared feature of a set of neurodegenerative disorders known as tauopathies. Acetylation of soluble tau is an early pathological event in neurodegeneration. In this work, we find that a large fraction of neuronal tau is degraded by chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) whereas, upon acetylation, tau is preferentially degraded by macroautophagy and endosomal microautophagy. Rerouting of acetylated tau to these other autophagic pathways originates, in part, from the inhibitory effect that acetylated tau exerts on CMA and results in its extracellular release. In fact, experimental blockage of CMA enhances cell-to-cell propagation of pathogenic tau in a mouse model of tauopathy. Furthermore, analysis of lysosomes isolated from brains of patients with tauopathies demonstrates similar molecular mechanisms leading to CMA dysfunction. This study reveals that CMA failure in tauopathy brains alters tau homeostasis and could contribute to aggravate disease progression.
| S-EPMC8047017 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Intracellular deposits of pathological tau are the hallmark of a broad spectrum of neurodegenerative disorders collectively known as tauopathies, with Alzheimer's disease, a secondary tauopathy, being further characterized by extracellular amyloid plaques. A major obstacle in developing effective treatments for tauopathies is the presence of the blood-brain barrier, which restricts the access of therapeutic agents to the brain. An emerging technology to overcome this limitation is the application of low-intensity ultrasound which, together with intravenously injected microbubbles, transiently opens the blood-brain barrier, thereby facilitating the delivery of therapeutic agents into the brain. Interestingly, even in the absence of therapeutic agents, ultrasound has previously been shown to reduce amyloid plaques and improve cognitive functions in amyloid-depositing mice through microglial clearance. Ultrasound has also been shown to facilitate the delivery of antibody fragments against pathological tau in P301L tau transgenic mice; however, the effect of ultrasound alone has not been thoroughly investigated in a tauopathy mouse model. Methods: Here, we performed repeated scanning ultrasound treatments over a period of 15 weeks in K369I tau transgenic mice with an early-onset tau-related motor and memory phenotype. We used immunohistochemical and biochemical methods to analyze the effect of ultrasound on the mice and determine the underlying mechanism of action, together with an analysis of their motor and memory functions following repeated ultrasound treatments. Results: Repeated ultrasound treatments significantly reduced tau pathology in the absence of histological damage. Associated impaired motor functions showed improvement towards the end of the treatment regime, with memory functions showing a trend towards improvement. In assessing potential clearance mechanisms, we ruled out a role for ubiquitination of tau, a prerequisite for proteasomal clearance. However, the treatment regime induced the autophagy pathway in neurons as reflected by an increase in the autophagosome membrane marker LC3II and a reduction in the autophagic flux marker p62, along with a decrease of mTOR activity and an increase in beclin 1 levels. Moreover, there was a significant increase in the interaction of tau and p62 in the ultrasound-treated mice, suggesting removal of tau by autophagosomes. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that a neuronal protein aggregate clearance mechanism induced by ultrasound-mediated blood-brain barrier opening operates for tau, further supporting the potential of low-intensity ultrasound to treat neurodegenerative disorders.
| S-EPMC6587352 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Tau tubulin kinase 2 (TTBK2) is a kinase known to phosphorylate tau and tubulin. It has recently drawn much attention due to its involvement in multiple important cellular processes. Here, we review the current understanding of TTBK2, including its sequence, structure, binding sites, phosphorylation substrates, and cellular processes involved. TTBK2 possesses a casein kinase 1 (CK1) kinase domain followed by a ~900 amino acid segment, potentially responsible for its localization and substrate recruitment. It is known to bind to CEP164, a centriolar protein, and EB1, a microtubule plus-end tracking protein. In addition to autophosphorylation, known phosphorylation substrates of TTBK2 include tau, tubulin, CEP164, CEP97, and TDP-43, a neurodegeneration-associated protein. Mutations of TTBK2 are associated with spinocerebellar ataxia type 11. In addition, TTBK2 is essential for regulating the growth of axonemal microtubules in ciliogenesis. It also plays roles in resistance of cancer target therapies and in regulating glucose and GABA transport. Reported sites of TTBK2 localization include the centriole/basal body, the midbody, and possibly the mitotic spindles. Together, TTBK2 is a multifunctional kinase involved in important cellular processes and demands augmented efforts in investigating its functions.
| S-EPMC4407412 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Assembled tau can transfer between cells and seed the aggregation of soluble tau. This process is thought to underlie the amplification and propagation of tau inclusions throughout the brain in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. An understanding of the mechanisms involved may provide strategies for limiting assembled tau propagation. Here, we sought to determine how assembled tau seeds gain access to the cytosol and whether this access triggers cellular defenses. We show that tau assemblies enter cells through clathrin-independent endocytosis and escape from damaged endomembranes into the cytosol, where they seed the aggregation of soluble tau. We also found that the danger receptor galectin-8 detects damaged endomembranes and activates autophagy through recruitment of the cargo receptor nuclear dot protein 52 (NDP52). Inhibition of galectin-8- and NDP52-dependent autophagy increased seeded tau aggregation, indicating that autophagy triggered by damaged endomembranes during the entry of assembled tau seeds protects against tau aggregation, in a manner similar to cellular defenses against cytosol-dwelling microorganisms. A second autophagy cargo receptor, p62, then targeted seeded tau aggregates. Our results reveal that by monitoring endomembrane integrity, cells reduce entry of tau seeds into the cytosol and thereby prevent seeded aggregation. The mechanisms described here may help inform the development of therapies aimed at inhibiting the propagation of protein assemblies in neurodegenerative diseases.
| S-EPMC5818177 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Intraneuronal neurofibrillary tangles composed of Tau aggregates have been widely accepted as an important pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. A current therapeutic avenue for treating Alzheimer's disease is aimed at inhibiting Tau accumulation with small molecules such as natural flavonoids. Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of Tau can lead to its aggregation, and Tau aggregates can then be degraded by autophagy. However, it is unclear whether natural flavonoids modulate the formation of phase-separated Tau droplets or promote autophagy and Tau clearance. Here, using confocal microscopy and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching assays, we report that a natural antioxidant flavonoid compound myricetin slows LLPS of full-length human Tau, shifting the equilibrium phase boundary to a higher protein concentration. This natural flavonoid also significantly inhibits pathological phosphorylation and abnormal aggregation of Tau in neuronal cells, and blocks mitochondrial damage and apoptosis induced by Tau aggregation. Importantly, using co-immunoprecipitation and Western blotting, we show that treatment of cells with myricetin stabilizes the interaction between Tau and autophagy-related protein 5 (ATG5) to promote clearance of phosphorylated Tau to indirectly limit its aggregation. Consistently, this natural flavonoid inhibits mTOR pathway, activates ATG5-dependent Tau autophagy, and almost completely suppresses Tau toxicity in neuronal cells. Collectively, these results demonstrate how LLPS and abnormal aggregation of Tau are inhibited by natural flavonoids, bridging the gap between Tau LLPS and aggregation in neuronal cells, and also establish that myricetin could act as an ATG5-dependent autophagic activator to ameliorate the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease.
| S-EPMC8551527 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To understand the molecular processes that link Aβ amyloidosis, tauopathy and neurodegeneration, we screened for tau-interacting proteins by immunoprecipitation/LC-MS. We identified the carboxy-terminal PDZ ligand of nNOS (CAPON) as a novel tau-binding protein. CAPON is an adaptor protein of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS), and activated by the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor. We observed accumulation of CAPON in the hippocampal pyramidal cell layer in the AppNL-G-F -knock-in (KI) brain. To investigate the effect of CAPON accumulation on Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis, CAPON was overexpressed in the brain of AppNL-G-F mice crossbred with MAPT (human tau)-KI mice. This produced significant hippocampal atrophy and caspase3-dependent neuronal cell death in the CAPON-expressing hippocampus, suggesting that CAPON accumulation increases neurodegeneration. CAPON expression also induced significantly higher levels of phosphorylated, oligomerized and insoluble tau. In contrast, CAPON deficiency ameliorated the AD-related pathological phenotypes in tauopathy model. These findings suggest that CAPON could be a druggable AD target.
| S-EPMC6546774 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The role of microtubule-associated protein Tau in neurodegeneration has been extensively investigated since the discovery of Tau amyloid aggregates in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The process of formation of amyloid fibrils is known as amyloidogenesis and attracts much attention as a potential target in the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative conditions linked to protein aggregation. Cerebral deposition of amyloid aggregates of Tau is observed not only in AD but also in numerous other tauopathies and prion diseases. Amyloidogenesis of intrinsically unstructured monomers of Tau can be triggered by mutations in the Tau gene, post-translational modifications, or interactions with polyanionic molecules and aggregation-prone proteins/peptides. The self-assembly of amyloid fibrils of Tau shares a number of characteristic features with amyloidogenesis of other proteins involved in neurodegenerative diseases. For example, in vitro experiments have demonstrated that the nucleation phase, which is the rate-limiting stage of Tau amyloidogenesis, is shortened in the presence of fragmented preformed Tau fibrils acting as aggregation templates ("seeds"). Accordingly, Tau aggregates released by tauopathy-affected neurons can spread the neurodegenerative process in the brain through a prion-like mechanism, originally described for the pathogenic form of prion protein. Moreover, Tau has been shown to form amyloid strains-structurally diverse self-propagating aggregates of potentially various pathological effects, resembling in this respect prion strains. Here, we review the current literature on Tau aggregation and discuss mechanisms of propagation of Tau amyloid in the light of the prion-like paradigm.
| S-EPMC5654847 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Description TSC1/hamartin haploinsufficiency increases risk for tauopathy by promoting tau acetylation and accumulation. Age-associated neurodegenerative disorders demonstrating tau-laden intracellular inclusions are known as tauopathies. We previously linked a loss-of-function mutation in the TSC1 gene to tau accumulation and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Now, we have identified genetic variants in TSC1 that decrease TSC1/hamartin levels and predispose to tauopathies such as Alzheimer’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy. Cellular and murine models of TSC1 haploinsufficiency, as well as human brains carrying a TSC1 risk variant, accumulated tau protein that exhibited aberrant acetylation. This acetylation hindered tau degradation via chaperone-mediated autophagy, thereby leading to its accumulation. Aberrant tau acetylation in TSC1 haploinsufficiency resulted from the dysregulation of both p300 acetyltransferase and SIRT1 deacetylase. Pharmacological modulation of either enzyme restored tau levels. This study substantiates TSC1 as a novel tauopathy risk gene and includes TSC1 haploinsufficiency as a genetic model for tauopathies. In addition, these findings promote tau acetylation as a rational target for tauopathy therapeutics and diagnostic.
| S-EPMC8570595 | biostudies-literature