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Distinct sub-cellular autophagy impairments occur independently of protein aggregation in aged induced neurons from patients with Huntington’s disease

ABSTRACT: Huntington’s disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by CAG expansions in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. Modelling HD in the lab has proven challenging as rodent models poorly reproduce the disease process and cellular models fail to include age-dependent processes crucial to the disease. Here we generated induced neurons (iNs) that retained age-dependent epigenetic characteristics of the donors through direct reprogramming of skin fibroblasts. HD-iNs displayed a transcriptionally regulated, distinct neurite specific alteration in autophagy, characterized by reduced transport of late autophagic structures and subsequent cargo degradation. In addition, HD-iNs displayed shorter, smaller and fewer neurites. CRISPRi-mediated silencing of both HTT alleles did not rescue the morphology nor the autophagic defect in HD-iNs. Strikingly, it resulted in additional autophagy alterations when done using ctrl-iNs, highlighting the importance of wt HTT in neuronal autophagy. In summary, our results have identified a distinct subcellular autophagy impairment in aged patient derived HD-neurons. In addition, we have shown a role for normal wt HTT in autophagy. Together this work provides a new rational for future development of autophagy activation therapies while also highlighting problems that may arise using non allele specific HTT silencing approaches, some of which are now in clinical trials.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE167104 | GEO | 2022/02/01

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited genetic disease caused by mutant huntingtin (htt) protein with expanded polyglutamine tracts. A neuropathological hallmark of HD is the presence of neuronal inclusions of mutant htt. p62 is an important regulatory protein in selective autophagy, a process by which aggregated proteins are degraded, and it is associated with several neurodegenerative disorders including HD. Here we investigated the effect of p62 depletion in three HD model mice: R6/2, HD190QG and HD120QG mice. We found that loss of p62 in these models led to longer lifespans and reduced nuclear inclusions, although cytoplasmic inclusions increased with polyglutamine length. In mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) with or without p62, mutant htt with a nuclear localization signal (NLS) showed no difference in nuclear inclusion between the two MEF types. In the case of mutant htt without NLS, however, p62 depletion increased cytoplasmic inclusions. Furthermore, to examine the effect of impaired autophagy in HD model mice, we crossed R6/2 mice with Atg5 conditional knockout mice. These mice also showed decreased nuclear inclusions and increased cytoplasmic inclusions, similar to HD mice lacking p62. These data suggest that the genetic ablation of p62 in HD model mice enhances cytoplasmic inclusion formation by interrupting autophagic clearance of polyQ inclusions. This reduces polyQ nuclear influx and paradoxically ameliorates disease phenotypes by decreasing toxic nuclear inclusions. Gene expression profiles were analyzed to examine the effects of p62 depletion in mouse with or without mutant huntingtin exon 1 To examine the effect of p62 depletion on the transcriptome of Huntington's disease model mice, we crossed p62 knockout mice with HD model mice. We extracted total RNA from the striatum of these mice at 8 weeks and used for a microaaray analysis. The samples are HD transgenic mice with p62 knockout (HD_p62KO), HD mice with normal p62 (HD_p62WT), non-HD-transgenic mice with p62 knockout (NT_p62KO), and non-HD-transgenic mice with normal p62 (NT_p62WT).

Project description:Despite extensive progress in Huntingtonâ??s Disease (HD) research, very little is known about the association of epigenetic variation and HD pathogenesis in human brain tissues. Moreover, its contribution to the tissue-specific transcriptional regulation of the huntingtin gene (HTT), in which HTT expression levels are highest in brain and testes, is currently unknown. To investigate the role of DNA methylation in HD pathogenesis and tissue-specific expression of HTT, we utilized the Illumina HumanMethylation450K BeadChip array to measure DNA methylation in a cohort of age-matched HD and control human cortex and liver tissues. In cortex samples, we found minimal evidence of HD-associated DNA methylation at probed sites after correction for cell heterogeneity but did observe an association to age of disease onset. By contrast, comparison of matched cortex and liver samples revealed tissue-specific DNA methylation of the HTT gene region at 38 sites (FDR < 0.05). Importantly, we identified a novel differentially methylated binding site in the HTT proximal promoter for the transcription factor CTCF. This CTCF site displayed increased occupancy in cortex, where HTT expression is higher, compared to liver. Additionally, CTCF silencing reduced the activity of a HTT promoter-reporter construct, suggesting that CTCF plays a role in regulating HTT promoter function. Overall, although we were unable to detect HD-associated DNA methylation alterations at queried sites, we found that DNA methylation may be correlated to age of disease onset in cortex tissues. Moreover, our data suggest that DNA methylation may, in part, contribute to tissue-specific HTT transcription through differential CTCF occupancy. The Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 Beadchip was used to obtain genome-wide DNA methylation measures in human cortex tissue (n = 13), with a subset of matched liver tissues (n = 5) , from a cohort of HD (n = 7) and control (n = 6) individuals in order to identify potential HD-related DNA methylation aberration in the brain as well as tissue-specific DNA methylation variation at the HTT gene locus.

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Distinct sub-cellular autophagy impairments occur independently of protein aggregation in aged induced neurons from patients with Huntington’s disease

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