Spinal motor neuron protein supersaturation patterns are associated with inclusion body formation in ALS.
View / Open Files
Authors
Ciryam, Prajwal
Lambert-Smith, Isabella A
Bean, Daniel M
Freer, Rosie
Cid, Fernando
Tartaglia, Gian Gaetano
Saunders, Darren N
Wilson, Mark R
Morimoto, Richard I
Dobson, Christopher
Favrin, Giorgio
Yerbury, Justin J
Publication Date
2017-05-16Journal Title
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA
ISSN
0027-8424
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Volume
114
Issue
20
Pages
E3935-E3943
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Ciryam, P., Lambert-Smith, I. A., Bean, D. M., Freer, R., Cid, F., Tartaglia, G. G., Saunders, D. N., et al. (2017). Spinal motor neuron protein supersaturation patterns are associated with inclusion body formation in ALS.. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, 114 (20), E3935-E3943. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1613854114
Abstract
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a heterogeneous degenerative motor neuron disease linked to numerous genetic mutations in apparently unrelated proteins. These proteins, including SOD1, TDP-43, and FUS, are highly aggregation-prone and form a variety of intracellular inclusion bodies that are characteristic of different neuropathological subtypes of the disease. Contained within these inclusions are a variety of proteins that do not share obvious characteristics other than coaggregation. However, recent evidence from other neurodegenerative disorders suggests that disease-affected biochemical pathways can be characterized by the presence of proteins that are supersaturated, with cellular concentrations significantly greater than their solubilities. Here, we show that the proteins that form inclusions of mutant SOD1, TDP-43, and FUS are not merely a subset of the native interaction partners of these three proteins, which are themselves supersaturated. To explain the presence of coaggregating proteins in inclusions in the brain and spinal cord, we observe that they have an average supersaturation even greater than the average supersaturation of the native interaction partners in motor neurons, but not when scores are generated from an average of other human tissues. These results suggest that inclusion bodies in various forms of ALS result from a set of proteins that are metastable in motor neurons, and thus prone to aggregation upon a disease-related progressive collapse of protein homeostasis in this specific setting.
Keywords
motor neuron disease, protein aggregation, protein homeostasis, protein misfolding, supersaturation, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Brain, DNA-Binding Proteins, Humans, Inclusion Bodies, Motor Neurons, Mutation, Protein Aggregates, Protein Aggregation, Pathological, Protein Folding, RNA-Binding Protein FUS, Spinal Cord, Spinal Nerves, Superoxide Dismutase, Superoxide Dismutase-1
Sponsorship
P.C. was supported by grants from the US-UK Fulbright Commission, St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, and NIH (Northwestern University Medical Scientist Training Program Grant T32 GM8152-28). I.A.L.-S. was supported by Rotary Health Australia. D.M.B., S.G.O., and G.F. were supported by the Wellcome Trust/Medical Research Council (Grant Code 089703/Z/09/Z). D.N.S. was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Project grant. R.I.M. was supported by grants from the NIH (National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institute on Aging, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke), Ellison Medical Foundation, Glenn Foundation, and Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Foundation. C.M.D. and M.V. are members of the Cambridge Centre for Misfolding Diseases and were supported by the Wellcome Trust. J.J.Y. was supported by grants from the NHMRC (Grants 1095215 and 1084144), Motor Neuron Disease Research Institute of Australia, and Australian Research Council (Grant DE120102840). F.C. and G.G.T. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (RIBOMYLOME_309545) and Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (BFU2014-55054-P).
Funder references
MRC (MR/N012453/1)
Wellcome Trust (089703/Z/09/Z)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1613854114
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/315109
Rights
Publisher's own licence