Abstract
Amyloid assemblies of Tau are associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In AD Tau undergoes several abnormal post-translational modifications, including hyperphosphorylation and glycosylation, which impact disease progression. N-glycosylated Tau was reported to be found in AD brain tissues but not in healthy counterparts. This is surprising since Tau is a cytosolic protein whereas N-glycosylation occurs in the ER-Golgi. Previous in vitro studies indicated that N-glycosylation of Tau facilitated its phosphorylation and contributed to maintenance of its Paired Helical Filament structure. However, the specific Tau residue(s) that undergo N-glycosylation and their effect on Tau-engendered pathology are unknown. High-performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry (LC–MS) analysis indicated that both N359 and N410 were N-glycosylated in wild-type (WT) human Tau (hTau) expressed in human SH-SY5Y cells. Asparagine to glutamine mutants, which cannot undergo N-glycosylation, at each of three putative N-glycosylation sites in hTau (N167Q, N359Q, and N410Q) were generated and expressed in SH-SY5Y cells and in transgenic Drosophila. The mutants modulated the levels of hTau phosphorylation in a site-dependent manner in both cell and fly models. Additionally, N359Q ameliorated, whereas N410Q exacerbated various aspects of hTau-engendered neurodegeneration in transgenic flies.
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Abbreviations
- AD:
-
Alzheimer’s disease
- CLN5:
-
Ceroid-lipofuscinosis neuronal protein 5
- dgPhy:
-
Deglycosylated phytase
- DTT:
-
Dl-Dithiothreitol
- GlcNAc:
-
β-N-Acetylglucosamine
- GSK3β:
-
Glycogen synthase kinase 3β
- hTau:
-
Human Tau
- NFTs:
-
Neurofibrillary tangles
- OST:
-
Oligosaccharyltransferase
- PHFs:
-
Paired helical filaments
- PKA:
-
Protein kinase A (cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase)
- PP2:
-
Protein phosphatase 2
- PP5:
-
Protein phosphatase 5
- SP:
-
Signal peptide
- SP-hTau:
-
Signal peptide human Tau
- TRP-1:
-
Tyrosine-related protein 1
- WT:
-
Wild type
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge Prof. Eckhard Mandelkow (DZNE, Bonn, Germany) for help with plasmid vectors and Dr. Alex Barbul for assistance with confocal microscopy. Authors are grateful to the members of the E.G. and D.S. research groups for discussion. G.K.V thanks TATA trusts for the post-doctoral scholarship.
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This work was supported in part by the Israel Science Foundation, the Helmholtz Israel Program, the Alliance Family Foundation, and the RoseTrees Trust (to D.S.).
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YL, MF and DS planned and designed the experiments with inputs from EG. YL, MF, MAH, GKV, DER and RG carried out the experiments. IK performed LC–MS analysis. YL and GKV prepared the figures, analyzed the results and wrote the manuscript with DS. All authors read and approved the manuscript.
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Losev, Y., Frenkel-Pinter, M., Abu-Hussien, M. et al. Differential effects of putative N-glycosylation sites in human Tau on Alzheimer’s disease-related neurodegeneration. Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 78, 2231–2245 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-020-03643-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-020-03643-3