Functional Studies of Alzheimer's Disease Tau Protein
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The Journal of Neuroscience, February 1993, 13(2): 508415 Functional Studies of Alzheimer’s Disease Tau Protein Qun Lu and John G. Wood Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30322 In vitroassays were used to monitor and compare the kinetic concentration at which pure tubulin assembles(Weingarten et behavior of bovine tubulin polymerization enhanced by tau al., 1975; Cleveland et al., 1977). In cultured fibroblasts, which proteins isolated from Alrheimer’s disease (AD) and nonde- do not contain endogenoustau, microinjected tau can incor- mented (ND) age-matched control brains. Tau from AD cases porate into microtubules and stabilize them against depoly- induced slower polymerization and a steady state turbidity merization conditions (Drubin and Kirschner, 1986; Lu and value approximately 50% of that stimulated by tau from con- Wood, 1991b). trol cases. Tau from the most severe AD case was least In brain, tau is largely localized in axons (Binder et al., 1985; effective at promoting polymerization. Dark-field light mi- Brion et al., 1988). However, in AD brain tau becomes an croscopy of the control samples revealed abundant micro- integral part of paired helical filaments (PHFs) in neurofibrillary tubule formation and many microtubule bundles. Microtubule tangles of neuronal cell bodies as well as dystrophic neurites assembly was observed in AD samples as well, but bundling associatedwith neuritic plaques (Brion et al., 1985; Grundke- was not obvious. These results were confirmed by negative- Iqbal et al., 1986, 1988; Kosik et al., 1986; Wood et al., 1986). stain electron microscopy. Morphological analysis showed This dislocation is accompanied by abnormal phosphorylation that AD tau-induced microtubules were longer than control (Grundke-Iqbal et al., 1986; Wood et al., 1986; Iqbal et al., microtubules. Furthermore, our initial results suggest that 1989; Brion et al., 199la; Lee et al., 199 1). Recently, it was the reduction of AD tau activity is correlated with neurofi- found that A68, a putative AD-specific protein (Wolozin et al., brillary pathology in AD brains. Earlier reports indicated that 1986), is an abnormally phosphorylated tau and is the only AD tau is modified by phosphorylation (Grundke-lqbal et al., component of a classof PHFs (Lee et al., 1991). The tubulins, 1988; Wood et al., 1988; lqbal et al., 1989; Brion et al., 1991 a,b; the main building block of microtubules from AD brain, are Lee et al., 1991). Our results support the hypothesis that tau functionally competent to reassembleand form microtubules modification compromises its function by altering its ability in vitro, but microtubule assemblyfrom AD brain homogenates to nucleate and bundle microtubules. is not observed (Iqbal et al., 1986). Thus, modification of tau [Key words: Alzheimer’s disease, tau protein, microtubule may be responsiblefor the defective microtubule assembly,as assembly, functional alteration, kinetic assay, light and elec- phosphorylated bovine tau was found to be less efficient in tron microscopy] promoting tubulin polymerization than dephosphorylated tau (Lindwall and Cole, 1984). Although it is reasonable to hy- pothesize that the alteration of tau distribution and chemistry Microtubules are the fundamental organelle for fast axonal contributes to the disruption of neuronal microtubule integrity transport, which is essentialfor the renewal of axons and mem- and the formation of AD pathology, it has not been established branes in the nerve terminal. Defective microtubule assembly whether AD tau, before it transforms into PHFs, is still func- and stabilization in neurons, therefore, could lead to impaired tional. In this study, we used in vitro assaysincluding kinetic axonal transport and abnormal synaptic transmission.The sta- analysisand subsequentdark-field light microscopy and electron bility of microtubules in neurons can be achieved in a number microscopy to addressthe questionswhether AD tau in soluble of ways, including tubulin posttranslational modification and form is functionally competent to promote microtubule for- the regulation of microtubule-associated proteins (MAPS) of mation and whether the microtubules thus formed expressdis- either the high-molecular-weight MAPS or the low-molecular- tinct behavior and morphology when compared with that stim- weight tau proteins (for review, seeMatus, 1988; Mitchison and ulated by ND tau. The results show that AD tau can stimulate Kirschner, 1988). microtubule assembly but with slower kinetics and different Tau proteins are a heat-stablefamily of developmentally reg- microtubule morphology, which supports the hypothesis that ulated phosphoproteinsthat are generatedby alternative splic- abnormal tau is involved in modification of the neuronal mi- ing of a singlegene (Drubin et al., 1984; Lee et al., 1988; Himm- crotubule system and AD pathogenesis. let-, 1989;Kosik et al., 1989). Zn vitro, tau stimulatesthe assembly of microtubules at tubulin concentrations well below the critical Materials and Methods Protein puriJicution. Bovine tubulin was isolated through temperature- dependent microtubule polymerization-depolymerization cycles and Received May 4, 1992; revised July 2 1, 199 1; accepted July 23, 1992. further purified by DEAE-Sephacelion exchangecolumn chromatog- We thank Dr. L. Binder for providing mAb Tau- 1, and Ms. J. Soria and Mr. raphy (Detrich. 1986). Tau was isolated using a modified method (Pol- R. Gopal for technical assistance. This work was supported by NIH Grants AG lock and Wood, 1988) of perchloric acid extraction of heat-stable frac- 06383, AG 11123, and NS 27847. tions (HSF) by Baudier et al. (1987). Fresh half AD or ND brains with Correspondence should be. addressed to J. G. Wood at the above address. averagepostmortem times of 7 hr were homogenizedin cold 20 mM Copyright 0 1993 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/93/130508-08$05.00/O 2-[N-morpholinolethanesulfonic acid (MES) buffer, pH 6.85 with 2 mM The Journal of Neuroscience, February 1993, 73(2) 509 ethylene glycol bis(@aminoethyl) ether-N,N,N’,N’-tetra-acetic acid (EGTA), 1 mM MgSO,, 0.75 M NaCl, and 1 mM fi-mercaptoethanol. A B Protease inhibitors leupeptin (10 pg/ml), pepstatin A (10 pg/ml), apro- tinin (125 KIU/mk KIU = Kallikrein inhibitorv unit), and 2 mM phen- vlmethylsulfonyl fluoride (PMSF) were added fresh to the buffer before 4 homogenization. The 75,000 x g supematant of brain homogenates was boiled at 95°C for 5 min in the same buffer with 0.75 M NaCl and 2 mM m-dithiothreitol (DTT) to generate HSF. Proteins other than tau 4 were precipitated by perchloric acid treatment and removed by cen- trifugation. Tau was also separated from high-molecular-weight micro- tubule-associated protein MAP-2 by molecular sieve chromatography 4 of the HSF on a Bio-Gel A 1.5 M column. Tau protein used for kinetic experiments was concentrated using an ultrafiltration unit (Amicon Corp., Danvers, MA) to 3-5 mg/ml and centrifuged at 45,000 x g for 20 min to remove aggregates before experiments. Proteinconcentrations were 4 determined using a Bio-Rad protein assay based on the Bradford method (1976). Western blot analysis was performed as described previously (Wood et al., 1986). Quantitative analysis of the bands and the ratio of 4 tau to tau fragments was performed using a Bio-Rad 620 video densi- tometer. Putholonv. Hippocampal slices from AD and ND brains were fixed in fresh PEP (p&formaldehyde, lysine, sodium periodate, and NaCl) mixture of McLean and Nakane ( 1974). Vibratome sections, 50 Brn, of hippocampus were stained using‘a modified Sevier-Munger silver im- pregnation method (Sevier and Munger, 1965). The occurrences of tan- gles and plaques were counted primarily in CA1 and CA4 subdivision of hippocampi at 200 x under the Zeiss Axiovert 35 light microscope. Figure 1. Western Blots of the proteins isolated for in vitro assays. A, The densities of tangles and plaques were determined by averaging the Bovine tubulin immunostained with monoclonal anti-a tubulin DM 1 A, data from total area of 2.1-10.8 mm2 with statistical analysis performed B, isolated human tau immunoblotted with mAb Tau- 1. Gel lanes were using CRICKET GRAPH software on the Apple Macintosh IIci computer. loaded with 4.2 pg total protein. Molecular weight standards are indi- Kineticanalysis. DEAE-Sephacel tubulin was mixed with AD or ND cated on the right (arrowheads);from top to bottom: 205 kDa, 116 kDa, tau at 4°C and polymerization was initiated in 0.1 M piperazine-N,N’- 66 kDa, 45 kDa, and 36 kDa. bis[2-ethanesulfonic acid] (PIPES) with 2 mM EGTA and 1 mM MgSO,, pH 6.72, by adding 1 mM guanosine 5’-triphosphate (GTP) and raising the temperature to 37°C. The kinetic behavior was monitored by re- Western blots of typical samplesof bovine tubulin and human cordine turbiditv changes at 350 nm o.d. using a Beckman DU-64 UV tau usedfor kinetic analysis. The bovine tubulin was devoid of spectrgphotomeier with a Kinetics Soft-Pa& module and temperature controller. microtubule-associatedproteins asjudged by Coomassieblue- Light and electronmicroscopy. After the kinetic measurements were stained gels (data not shown). AD and ND tau were isolated completed, aliquots were taken from cuvettes for dark-field light mi- based on the heat-stable and perchloric acid-soluble properties croscopic examination. In addition, 5 ~1 aliquots were dropped onto of tau proteins. Human tau proteins isolated by our method Formvar-coated grids and negatively stained with 2% uranyl acetate for electron microscopy. Some samples were fixed in 0.2% glutaraldehyde contained the major isoforms at 55-70 kDa MW with some prior to electron microscopic (EM) examination. For thin-section elec- degradation products. These bands were reactive with Tau-l tron microscopy, aliquots were centrifuged at 45,000 x g for 30 min monoclonal anti-tau (a gift generouslyprovided by Dr. L. Binder at 32°C to nellet microtubules. These samples were then fixed in 0.2% at the University of Alabama, Birmingham) and polyclonal anti- glutaraldehyde, postfixed in 1% OsO,, and embedded for thin sectioning.