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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 282, Issue 28, 20309-20318, July 13, 2007

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Fibrillogenic Nuclei Composed of P301L Mutant Tau Induce Elongation of P301L Tau but Not Wild-type Tau^*

Hirofumi Aoyagi¹, Masato Hasegawa², and Akira Tamaoka

From the Department of Molecular Neurobiology, Tokyo Institute of Psychiatry, Tokyo Metropolitan Organization for Medical Research, 2-1-8 Kamikitazawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 156-8585, Japan and the Department of Neurology, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8575, Japan

Frontotemporal dementia and parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17), an autosomal, dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by tau gene mutations, is neuropathologically characterized by intraneuronal filamentous inclusions of hyperphosphorylated tau protein. Biochemical and immunocytochemical analyses have shown that only mutant tau is deposited in patients harboring P301L missense mutation, whereas both wild-type and mutant tau are deposited in patients harboring R406W mutation (Miyasaka, T., Morishima-Kawashima, M., Ravid, R., Kamphorst, W., Nagashima, K., and Ihara, Y. (2001) J. Neuropathol. Exp. Neurol. 60, 872– 884 and Miyasaka, T., Morishima-Kawashima, M., Ravid, R., Heutink, P., van Swieten, J. C., Nagashima, K., and Ihara, Y. (2001) Am. J. Pathol. 158, 373–379). Here we have tested the nucleation ability of monomeric tau and the seeding ability of fibrillogenic nuclei obtained from bacterially expressed human tau. P301L mutant tau showed a higher nucleation ability than wild-type tau, whereas R406W mutant tau shows similar ability to wild-type tau. Surprisingly, fibrillogenic nuclei composed of P301L mutant tau enhanced the assembly of P301L mutant tau into filaments but did not promote filament formation from wild-type tau. In contrast, nuclei composed of R406W mutant tau supported filament formation from both wild-type tau and R406W mutant tau, as did nuclei composed of wild-type tau. Proteolytic analyses indicated that the substructure of nuclei composed of P301L mutant tau was different from that of nuclei composed of wild-type or R406W mutant tau. Thus, the interaction between fibrillogenic nuclei and monomeric protein appears to play an important role in the mechanism of tau filament assembly.

Received for publication, December 28, 2006 , and in revised form, May 8, 2007.

^* This work was supported by a grant-in-aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas-Research on Pathomechanisms of Brain Disorders and a grant-in-aid for Scientific Research (B) (to M. H.), both from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Table 1.

¹ Present address: Discovery Research Laboratories I, Eisai Co., Ltd., 5-1-3 Tokodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 300-2635, Japan.

² To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 81-3-3304-5701; Fax: 81-3-3329-8035; E-mail: masato{at}prit.go.jp.

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