It takes more than tau to tangle: using proteomics to determine how phosphorylated tau mediates toxicity in neurodegenerative diseases.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Pires G
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8354106 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Hyperphosphorylated tau protein is a major component of neurofibrillary tangles, a prominent intracellular hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. Both hyperphosphorylated tau and neurofibrillary tangles have been shown to correlate with dementia in Alzheimer's disease, but the relationship between hyperphosphorylation and tangle formation is not clear. Using a cell-free in vitro model system, in which tau polymerization is induced by arachidonic acid, we show that GSK-3beta phosphorylation of pre-assembled tau filaments makes those filaments prone to coalesce into large neurofibrillary tangle-like structures. Five phosphorylation sites, S199, T205, T231, S396 and S404, were identified in the phosphorylated filaments; many of the five are within epitopes recognized by Alzheimer's disease-associated antibodies. These tangle-like structures are optically visible and are similar to those formed by polymerization of GSK-3beta phosphorylated tau monomer and to those isolated from Alzheimer's disease tissue. We conclude that the phosphorylation of tau by GSK-3beta either prior to or following polymerization promotes polymer/polymer interactions that result in stable clusters of tau filaments.
| S-EPMC2607042 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Tauopathies are neurodegenerative diseases characterized by the aggregation of tau protein. These pathologies exhibit a wide variety of clinical and anatomo-pathological presentations, which may result from different pathological mechanisms. Although tau inclusions are a common feature in all these diseases, recent evidence instead implicates small oligomeric aggregates as drivers of tau-induced toxicity. Hence in vivo model systems displaying either soluble or fibrillary forms of wild-type or mutant tau are needed to better identify their respective pathological pathways. Here we used adeno-associated viruses to mediate gene transfer of human tau to the rat brain to develop models of pure tauopathies. Two different constructs were used, each giving rise to a specific phenotype developing in less than 3 months. First, hTAUWT overexpression led to a strong hyperphosphorylation of the protein, which was associated with neurotoxicity in the absence of any significant aggregation. In sharp contrast, its co-expression with the pro-aggregation peptide TauRD-?K280 in the hTAUProAggr group strongly promoted its aggregation into Gallyas-positive neurofibrillary tangles, while preserving neuronal survival. Our results support the hypothesis that soluble tau species are key players of tau-induced neurodegeneration.
| S-EPMC5837551 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: Granulovacuolar degeneration (GVD) is one of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and it is defined as electron-dense granules within double membrane-bound cytoplasmic vacuoles. Several lines of evidence have suggested that GVDs appear within hippocampal pyramidal neurons in AD when phosphorylated tau begins to aggregate into early-stage neurofibrillary tangles. The aim of this study is to investigate the association of GVDs with phosphorylated tau pathology to determine whether GVDs and phosphorylated tau coexist among different non-AD neurodegenerative disorders. METHODS: An autopsied series of 28 patients with a variety of neurodegenerative disorders and 9 control patients were evaluated. Standard histological stains along with immunohistochemistry using protein markers for GVD and confocal microscopy were utilized. RESULTS: The number of neurons with GVDs significantly increased with the level of phosphorylated tau accumulation in the hippocampal regions in non-AD neurodegenerative disorders. At the cellular level, diffuse staining for phosphorylated tau was detected in neurons with GVDs. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that GVDs appear in relation to hippocampal phosphorylated tau accumulation in various neurodegenerative disorders, while the presence of phosphorylated tau in GVD-harbouring neurons in non-AD neurodegenerative disorders was indistinguishable from age-related accumulation of phosphorylated tau. Although GVDs in non-AD neurodegenerative disorders have not been studied thoroughly, our results suggest that they are not incidental findings, but rather they appear in relation to phosphorylated tau accumulation, further highlighting the role of GVD in the process of phosphorylated tau accumulation.
| S-EPMC3207829 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In Alzheimer's disease tauopathy is considered secondary to amyloid, and the duality obscures their relation and the definition of their respective contributions.Transgenic mouse models do not resolve this problem conclusively, i.e. the relative hierarchy of amyloid and tau pathology depends on the actual model and the genes expressed or inactivated. Here, we approached the problem in non-transgenic models by intracerebral injection of adeno-associated viral vectors to express protein tau or amyloid precursor protein in the hippocampus in vivo. AAV-APP mutant caused neuronal accumulation of amyloid peptides, and eventually amyloid plaques at 6 months post-injection, but with only marginal hippocampal cell-death. In contrast, AAV-Tau, either wild-type or mutant P301L, provoked dramatic degeneration of pyramidal neurons in CA1/2 and cortex within weeks. Tau-mediated neurodegeneration proceeded without formation of large fibrillar tau-aggregates or tangles, but with increased expression of cell-cycle markers.We present novel AAV-based models, which demonstrate that protein tau mediates pyramidal neurodegeneration in vivo. The data firmly support the unifying hypothesis that post-mitotic neurons are forced to re-enter the cell-cycle in primary and secondary tauopathies, including Alzheimer's disease.
| S-EPMC2748684 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The deposition of amyloid-like filaments in the brain is the central event in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. Here we report cellular models of intracytoplasmic inclusions of ?-synuclein, generated by introducing nucleation seeds into SH-SY5Y cells with a transfection reagent. Upon introduction of preformed seeds into cells overexpressing ?-synuclein, abundant, highly filamentous ?-synuclein-positive inclusions, which are extensively phosphorylated and ubiquitinated and partially thioflavin-positive, were formed within the cells. SH-SY5Y cells that formed such inclusions underwent cell death, which was blocked by small molecular compounds that inhibit ?-sheet formation. Similar seed-dependent aggregation was observed in cells expressing four-repeat Tau by introducing four-repeat Tau fibrils but not three-repeat Tau fibrils or ?-synuclein fibrils. No aggregate formation was observed in cells overexpressing three-repeat Tau upon treatment with four-repeat Tau fibrils. Our cellular models thus provide evidence of nucleation-dependent and protein-specific polymerization of intracellular amyloid-like proteins in cultured cells.
| S-EPMC2966103 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Increasing evidence demonstrates the transmissibility of fibrillar species of tau protein, but this has never been directly tested in neurons, the cell type most affected by formation of tau inclusions in neurodegenerative tauopathies. Here we show that synthetic tau fibrils made from recombinant protein not only time-dependently recruit normal tau into neurofibrillary tangle-like insoluble aggregates in primary hippocampal neurons over-expressing human tau, but also induce neuritic tau pathology in non-transgenic neurons. This study provides highly compelling support for the protein-only hypothesis of pathological tau transmission in primary neurons and describes a useful neuronal model for studying the pathogenesis of tauopathies.
| S-EPMC3678381 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To date, there is no validated fluid biomarker for tau pathology in Alzheimer's disease, with contradictory results from studies evaluating the correlation between phosphorylated tau in CSF with tau PET imaging. Tau protein is subjected to proteolytic processing into fragments before being secreted to the CSF. A recent study suggested that tau cleavage after amino acid 368 by asparagine endopeptidase (AEP) is upregulated in Alzheimer's disease. We used immunoprecipitation followed by mass spectrometric analyses to evaluate the presence of tau368 species in CSF. A novel Simoa® assay for quantification of tau368 in CSF was developed, while total tau (t-tau) was measured by ELISA and the presence of tau368 in tangles was evaluated using immunohistochemistry. The diagnostic utility of tau368 was first evaluated in a pilot study (Alzheimer's disease = 20, control = 20), then in a second cohort where the IWG-2 biomarker criteria were applied (Alzheimer's disease = 37, control = 45), and finally in a third cohort where the correlation with 18F-GTP1 tau PET was evaluated (Alzheimer's disease = 38, control = 11). The tau368/t-tau ratio was significantly decreased in Alzheimer's disease (P < 0.001) in all cohorts. Immunohistochemical staining demonstrated that tau fragments ending at 368 are present in tangles. There was a strong negative correlation between the CSF tau368/t-tau ratio and 18F-GTP1 retention. Our data suggest that tau368 is a tangle-enriched fragment and that the CSF ratio tau368/t-tau reflects tangle pathology. This novel tau biomarker could be used to improve diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and to facilitate the development of drug candidates targeting tau pathology. Furthermore, future longitudinal studies will increase our understanding of tau pathophysiology in Alzheimer's disease and other tauopathies.
| S-EPMC7009597 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Tau is a microtubule associated protein in the brain that aggregates in Alzheimer's disease to form pathological tangles and neurites. Insoluble tau aggregates composed of the microtubule binding region (MTBR) of tau are highly associated with the cognitive and clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. In contrast, levels of soluble forms of tau, such as CSF total tau and phosphorylated tau-181 and tau-217, increase prior to tau aggregation in Alzheimer's disease, but these biomarkers do not measure the MTBR of tau. Thus, how CSF MTBR-tau is altered in Alzheimer's disease remains unclear. In this study, we used sequential immunoprecipitation and chemical extraction methods followed by mass spectrometry to analyse MTBR-tau species in Alzheimer's disease and control CSF. We quantified MTBR-tau-specific regions in the CSF and identified that species containing the region beginning at residue 243 were the most highly correlated with tau PET and cognitive measures. This finding suggests that CSF level of tau species containing the upstream region of MTBR may reflect changes in tau pathology that occur in Alzheimer's disease and could serve as biomarkers to stage Alzheimer's disease and track the development of tau-directed therapeutics.
| S-EPMC7940175 | biostudies-literature
Project description:While cytokines such as TNF have long been recognized as essential to normal cerebral physiology, the implications of their chronic excessive production within the brain are now also increasingly appreciated. Syndromes as diverse as malaria and lead poisoning, as well as non-infectious neurodegenerative diseases, illustrate this. These cytokines also orchestrate changes in tau, ?-synuclein, amyloid-? levels and degree of insulin resistance in most neurodegenerative states. New data on the effects of salbutamol, an indirect anti-TNF agent, on ?-synuclein and Parkinson's disease, APOE4 and tau add considerably to the rationale of the anti-TNF approach to understanding, and treating, these diseases. Therapeutic advances being tested, and arguably useful for a number of the neurodegenerative diseases, include a reduction of excess cerebral TNF, whether directly, with a specific anti-TNF biological agent such as etanercept via Batson's plexus, or indirectly via surgically implanting stem cells. Inhaled salbutamol also warrants investigating further across the neurodegenerative disease spectrum. It is now timely to integrate this range of new information across the neurodegenerative disease spectrum, rather than keep seeing it through the lens of individual disease states.
| S-EPMC6151331 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: Tangle-predominant dementia (TPD) is characterized neuropathologically by numerous neurofibrillary tangles in the limbic areas with no or occasional senile plaques throughout the brain. TPD is an under-recognized disease, while it is a common cause of dementia in those over 80 years of age. In the present study, we describe hyperphosphorylated tau (tau) accumulation in the nucleus accumbens (Acb) in patients with TPD. RESULTS: We investigated immunohistochemically the brain tissues from 7 patients with TPD, 22 with Alzheimer disease (AD) and 11 non-demented aged subjects. In the Acb of all 7 TPD patients, a considerable number of tau positive neurons were found together with many neuropil threads. The tau deposits in the Acb were labeled with all the anti-tau antibodies used in the present study. They included conformational change-specific, phosphorylation-specific and phosphorylation-independent antibodies. The Acb consists of the predominant medium-sized neurons with a small number of large neurons. Both the cell types were affected by tau pathology in TPD. Tau accumulation in the majority of such neurons appeared to be pretangle-like, diffuse deposits with only occasional paired helical filament formation. Tau positive neurons were also found in the Acb in some AD and non-demented aged subjects but much fewer in the majority of cases. The immunoblot analyses of fresh frozen samples of the Acb and parahippocampal cortex from 3 TPD and 3 AD patients revealed that the insoluble tau in the Acb was a mixture of the 3- and 4-repeat isoforms. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first report on the occurrence of tau accumulation in the Acb in TPD. The Acb receives direct and massive projections from the hippocampal CA1 and subiculum where neurofibrillary tangles are known to occur more frequently in TPD than in AD. The prevalence of abnormal tau accumulation in the Acb in TPD may support the idea that abnormal tau aggregation propagates via neural circuits. In all but one TPD cases used in this study, delusion was a consistent clinical feature. Whether the Acb tau accumulation is related to the psychiatric symptoms in TPD may be an issue for further investigation.
| S-EPMC4023632 | biostudies-literature