Papers In Press, published online ahead of print January 16, 2008
J. Biol. Chem, 10.1074/jbc.M707142200
Submitted on August 27, 2007
Revised on January 16, 2008
Accepted on January 16, 2008
Amyloidogenic processing but not aicd production requires a precisely oriented APP dimer assembled by transmembrane GXXXG motifs
Pascal Kienlen-Campard, Bernadette Tasiaux, Joanne Van Hees, Mingli Li, Sandra Huysseune, Takeshi Sato, Jeffrey Z. Fei, Saburo Aimoto, Pierre J. Courtoy, Steven O. Smith, Stefan N. Constantinescu, and Jean-Noel Octave
Laboratoire de Pharmacologie Expérimentale, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Brussels B-1200
Corresponding Author: octave{at}nchm.ucl.ac.be
The
-amyloid peptide (A
) is the major constituent of the amyloid core of senile plaques found in the brain of patients with Alzheimers disease (AD). A
is produced by the sequential cleavage of the Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP) by
- and
-secretases. Cleavage of APP by
-secretase also generates the APP Intracellular C-terminal Domain (AICD) peptide, which might be involved in regulation of gene transcription. APP contains three glycine-xxx-glycine (GxxxG) motifs in its juxtamembrane and transmembrane (TM) regions. Such motifs are known to promote dimerization via close apposition of TM sequences. We demonstrate that pairwise replacement of glycines by leucines or isoleucines, but not alanines, in a GxxxG motif led to a drastic reduction of A
40 and A
42 secretion.
-Cleavage of mutant APP was not inhibited, and reduction of A
secretion resulted from inhibition of
-cleavage. It was anticipated that decreased
-cleavage of mutant APP would result from inhibition of its dimerization. Surprisingly, mutations of the GxxxG motif actually enhanced dimerization of the APP C-terminal fragments, possibly via a different TM
-helical interface. Increased dimerization of the TM APP C-terminal domain did not affect AICD production. These results clearly demonstrate that both orientation and dimerization of the APP TM domain differently affect A
and AICD production