Dataset Information

Contribution of Nuclear and Extranuclear PolyQ to Neurological Phenotypes in Mouse Models of Huntington’s Disease

ABSTRACT: To dissect the impact of nuclear and extranuclear mutant htt on the initiation and progression of disease, we generated a series of transgenic mouse lines in which nuclear localization (NLS) or nuclear export sequences (NES) have been placed N-terminal to the htt exon 1 protein carrying 144 glutamines. Our data indicate that the exon 1 mutant protein is present in the nucleus as part of an oligomeric or aggregation complex. Increasing the concentration of the mutant transprotein in the nucleus is sufficient for, and dramatically accelerates the onset and progression of behavioral phenotypes. Furthermore, nuclear exon 1 mutant protein is sufficient to induce cytoplasmic neurodegeneration and transcriptional dysregulation. However, our data suggests that cytoplasmic mutant exon 1 htt, if present, contributes to disease progression. Keywords: Trangenic mouse brain gene expression

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE3248 | GEO | 2005/09/07

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA92893

REPOSITORIES: GEO

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited genetic disease caused by mutant huntingtin (htt) protein with expanded polyglutamine tracts. A neuropathological hallmark of HD is the presence of neuronal inclusions of mutant htt. p62 is an important regulatory protein in selective autophagy, a process by which aggregated proteins are degraded, and it is associated with several neurodegenerative disorders including HD. Here we investigated the effect of p62 depletion in three HD model mice: R6/2, HD190QG and HD120QG mice. We found that loss of p62 in these models led to longer lifespans and reduced nuclear inclusions, although cytoplasmic inclusions increased with polyglutamine length. In mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) with or without p62, mutant htt with a nuclear localization signal (NLS) showed no difference in nuclear inclusion between the two MEF types. In the case of mutant htt without NLS, however, p62 depletion increased cytoplasmic inclusions. Furthermore, to examine the effect of impaired autophagy in HD model mice, we crossed R6/2 mice with Atg5 conditional knockout mice. These mice also showed decreased nuclear inclusions and increased cytoplasmic inclusions, similar to HD mice lacking p62. These data suggest that the genetic ablation of p62 in HD model mice enhances cytoplasmic inclusion formation by interrupting autophagic clearance of polyQ inclusions. This reduces polyQ nuclear influx and paradoxically ameliorates disease phenotypes by decreasing toxic nuclear inclusions. Gene expression profiles were analyzed to examine the effects of p62 depletion in mouse with or without mutant huntingtin exon 1 To examine the effect of p62 depletion on the transcriptome of Huntington's disease model mice, we crossed p62 knockout mice with HD model mice. We extracted total RNA from the striatum of these mice at 8 weeks and used for a microaaray analysis. The samples are HD transgenic mice with p62 knockout (HD_p62KO), HD mice with normal p62 (HD_p62WT), non-HD-transgenic mice with p62 knockout (NT_p62KO), and non-HD-transgenic mice with normal p62 (NT_p62WT).

Project description:Protein aggregation is a hallmark of many neurodegenerative diseases. In order to cope with misfolding and aggregation, cells have evolved an elaborate network of molecular chaperones, composed of different families. But while chaperoning mechanisms for different families are well established, functional and regulatory diversification within chaperone families is still largely a mystery. Here we decided to explore chaperone functional diversity, through the lens of pathological aggregation. We revealed that different naturally-occurring isoforms of DNAJ chaperones showed differential effects on different types of aggregates. We performed a chaperone screen for modulators of two neurodegeneration-related aggregating proteins, the Huntington’s disease-related HTT-polyQ, and the ALS-related mutant FUS (mutFUS). The screen identified known modulators of HTT-polyQ aggregation, confirming the validity of our approach. Surprisingly, modulators of mutFUS aggregation were completely different than those of HTT-polyQ. Interestingly, different naturally-occurring isoforms of DNAJ chaperones had opposing effects on HTT-polyQ vs. mutFUS aggregation. We identified a complex of the full length (FL) DNAJB14 and DNAJB12 isoforms which substantially alleviated mutFUS aggregation, in an HSP70-dependent manner. Their naturally occurring short isoforms were unable to form the complex, nor to interact with HSP70, and lost their ability to reduce mutFUS aggregation. In contrast, the short isoform of DNAJB12 significantly alleviated HTT-polyQ aggregation, while DNAJB12-FL aggravated HTT-polyQ aggregation. Finally, we demonstrated that full-length DNAJB14 ameliorated mutFUS aggregation compared to DNAJB14-short in primary neurons. Together, our data unraveled distinct molecular properties required for aggregation protection in different neurodegenerative diseases, and revealed a new layer of complexity of the chaperone network elicited by naturally occurring J-protein isoforms, highlighting functional diversity among the DNAJ family.

Dataset Information

Contribution of Nuclear and Extranuclear PolyQ to Neurological Phenotypes in Mouse Models of Huntington’s Disease

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure