Project description:Cognitive decline in aging is a major issue, causing both personal and economic hardship in an increasingly aging society. There are several known individual misfolded proteins that cause issues with age, such as amyloid beta and alpha synuclein. However, many studies have found that the proteostasis network, which works to keep proteins properly folded, is impaired with age, suggesting that there may be more global protein structural changes. We used limited-proteolysis mass spectrometry (LiP-MS) to investigate protein structural changes proteome-wide in a rodent model of aging. We compared hippocampi from aged rodents with normal cognition (aged unimpaired, AU) to hippocampi from aged rodents with impaired cognition (aged impaired, AI). We identified several hundred proteins as Cognition-Associated Structural Changes (CASCs), which are structurally different between the AU and AI populations. We found correlations between these trends and those of protein refoldability, a separate measure of how well a protein can independently refold to its native state after complete denaturation. CASCs were enriched with nonrefoldable proteins. Potential confounding factors of our study such as LiP reproducibility and post-translational modifications were assessed. Searches for oxidation and phosphorylation did not yield significant differences between AU and AI samples within each hippocampal region. Our study overall suggests that neuronal protein structural changes are global in nature and are more often intrinsically nonrefoldable, which may partially explain their susceptibility to structural changes due to proteostasis network breakdown in age.
Project description:Cognitive decline in aging is a major issue, causing both personal and economic hardship in an increasingly aging society. There are several known individual misfolded proteins that cause issues with age, such as amyloid beta and alpha synuclein. However, many studies have found that the proteostasis network, which works to keep proteins properly folded, is impaired with age, suggesting that there may be more global protein structural changes. We used limited-proteolysis mass spectrometry (LiP-MS) to investigate protein structural changes proteome-wide in a rodent model of aging. We compared hippocampi from aged rodents with normal cognition (aged unimpaired, AU) to hippocampi from aged rodents with impaired cognition (aged impaired, AI). We identified several hundred proteins as Cognition-Associated Structural Changes (CASCs), which are structurally different between the AU and AI populations. We found correlations between these trends and those of protein refoldability, a separate measure of how well a protein can independently refold to its native state after complete denaturation. CASCs were enriched with nonrefoldable proteins. Potential confounding factors of our study such as LiP reproducibility and post-translational modifications were assessed. Searches for oxidation and phosphorylation did not yield significant differences between AU and AI samples within each hippocampal region. Our study overall suggests that neuronal protein structural changes are global in nature and are more often intrinsically nonrefoldable, which may partially explain their susceptibility to structural changes due to proteostasis network breakdown in age.
Project description:As human society ages globally, age-related disorders are becoming increasingly common. Due to decreasing physiological reserves and increasing organ system dysfunction associated with age, frailty affects many elderly people, compromising their ability to cope with acute stressors. Frail elderly people commonly manifest complex clinical symptoms, including cognitive dysfunction, hypomobility, and impaired daily activity, the metabolic basis of which has been little understood. We applied untargeted, comprehensive, LC-MS metabolomic analysis to human blood from 19 frail and non-frail elderly patients, who were clinically evaluated using the Edmonton Frail Scale, the MoCA-J for cognition, and the TUG for mobility. Among 131 metabolites assayed, we identified 22 markers for frailty, cognition, and hypomobility, most of which were abundant in blood. Frailty markers included 5 of 6 markers specifically related to cognition and 6 of 12 associated with hypomobility. These overlapping sets of markers include metabolites related to antioxidation, muscle or nitrogen metabolism, and amino acids, most of which decrease in frail elderly people. Five frailty-related metabolites that decreased (1,5-anhydroglucitol, acetyl-carnosine, ophthalmic acid, leucine, and isoleucine) have been previously reported as markers of aging, providing a metabolic link between human aging and frailty. Our findings clearly indicate that metabolite profiles efficiently distinguish frailty from non-frailty. Importantly, the antioxidant, ergothioneine, which decreases in frailty, is neuroprotective. Oxidative stress resulting from diminished antioxidant levels, could be a key vulnerability for pathogenesis of frailty, exacerbating illnesses related to human aging.
Project description:Histone deacetylase (HDAC) 4 is a transcriptional repressor that contains a glutamine rich domain. We hypothesised that it may be involved in the molecular pathogenesis of Huntington's disease (HD), a protein folding neurodegenerative disorder caused by an aggregation-prone polyglutamine expansion and transcriptional dysregulation. We found that HDAC4 interacts with huntingtin in a polyglutamine-length dependent manner and co-localises with cytoplasmic inclusions. We show that HDAC4 reduction delayed cytoplasmic aggregate formation, restored Bdnf transcript levels and rescued neuronal and cortico-striatal synaptic function in HD mouse models. This was accompanied by an improvement in motor co-ordination, neurological phenotypes and increased lifespan. Surprisingly, HDAC4 reduction had no effect on global transcriptional dysfunction and did not modulate nuclear huntingtin aggregation. Our results define a crucial role for cytoplasmic aggregation in the molecular pathology of HD. HDAC4 reduction presents a novel strategy for targeting huntingtin aggregation which may be amenable to small molecule therapeutics. mRNA expression analysis was performed by microarray in 9 weeks old WT (n=9), R6/2 (n=9), HDAC4het (n=9) and Double R6/2::HDAC4het (n=10) mice. Microarray quality control was performed using the software package provided on RACE (http://race.unil.ch).
Project description:Histone deacetylase (HDAC) 4 is a transcriptional repressor that contains a glutamine rich domain. We hypothesised that it may be involved in the molecular pathogenesis of Huntington's disease (HD), a protein folding neurodegenerative disorder caused by an aggregation-prone polyglutamine expansion and transcriptional dysregulation. We found that HDAC4 interacts with huntingtin in a polyglutamine-length dependent manner and co-localises with cytoplasmic inclusions. We show that HDAC4 reduction delayed cytoplasmic aggregate formation, restored Bdnf transcript levels and rescued neuronal and cortico-striatal synaptic function in HD mouse models. This was accompanied by an improvement in motor co-ordination, neurological phenotypes and increased lifespan. Surprisingly, HDAC4 reduction had no effect on global transcriptional dysfunction and did not modulate nuclear huntingtin aggregation. Our results define a crucial role for cytoplasmic aggregation in the molecular pathology of HD. HDAC4 reduction presents a novel strategy for targeting huntingtin aggregation which may be amenable to small molecule therapeutics. mRNA expression analysis was performed by microarray in 15 weeks old WT (n=8), R6/2 (n=9), HDAC4het (n=8) and Double R6/2::HDAC4het (n=9) mice. Microarray quality control was performed using the software package provided on RACE (http://race.unil.ch).
Project description:Women are twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s disease (AD) than men and multiparity has been suggested to be a risk factor for dementia. The present study evaluated whether the lack of certain nutrients during pregnancy influences cognition while pregnant and in old age in mouse model. Non-targeted NMR analysis revealed significantly lower levels of numerous plasma nutrients and metabolites including choline and its derivatives on gestation day 7 compared to day 1. Novel object recognition and Morris Water Maze tests revealed impaired cognition in pregnant mice compared to nonpregnant controls. Choline deprivation worsened the cognitive impairment during pregnancy and choline supplementation alleviated it. Furthermore, choline availability during pregnancy affected cognition and general health in old age, with mice given a choline-deficient diet during pregnancy performed more poorly. RNA-Seq analysis indicates lasting effect of choline intake during pregnancy on hippocampal gene signatures in old age. Choline deprivation was associated with more upregulation of proinflammatory genes, whereas choline supplementation showed upregulation of neuroprotective genes such as Prl, Gh, and hemoglobin (Hba and Hbb subunits). Together the study shows that choline supplement benefits women’s cognitive health during pregnancy and at the old age.