University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Increased Expression of Frontotemporal Dementia Risk Factor Tmem106b Alters Lysosomal and Autophagosomal Pathways Johanna Irene Busch University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Cell Biology Commons, and the Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons Recommended Citation Busch, Johanna Irene, "Increased Expression of Frontotemporal Dementia Risk Factor Tmem106b Alters Lysosomal and Autophagosomal Pathways" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1630. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1630 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1630 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Increased Expression of Frontotemporal Dementia Risk Factor Tmem106b Alters Lysosomal and Autophagosomal Pathways Abstract Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is an important cause of dementia in individuals under age 65. Common variants in the TMEM106B gene were previously discovered by genome-wide association (GWAS) to confer genetic risk for FTLD-TDP, the largest neuropathological subset of FTLD (p=1x10-11, OR=1.6). Prior to its discovery in the GWAS, TMEM106B, or Transmembrane Protein 106B, was uncharacterized. To further understand the role of TMEM106B in disease pathogenesis, we used immortalized as well as primary neurons to assess the cell biological effects of disease-relevant levels of TMEM106B overexpression and the interaction of TMEM106B with additional disease-associated proteins. We also employed immunostaining to assess its expression pattern in human brain from controls and FTLD cases. We discovered that TMEM106B is a highly glycosylated, Type II late endosomal/lysosomal transmembrane protein. We found that it is expressed by neurons, glia, and peri-vascular cells in disease- affected and unaffected regions of human brain from normal controls in a cytoplasmic, perikaryal distribution.