|
Advertisement | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 282, Issue 32, 23645-23654, August 10, 2007
Novel Phosphorylation Sites in Tau from Alzheimer Brain Support a Role for Casein Kinase 1 in Disease Pathogenesis*
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ABSTRACT |
|---|
|
|
|---|
and glycogen synthase kinase-3
were each found to phosphorylate numerous sites, and each kinase phosphorylated at least 15 sites that are also phosphorylated in PHF-tau from Alzheimer brain. A combination of casein kinase 1
and glycogen synthase kinase-3
activities could account for over three-quarters of the serine/threonine phosphorylation sites identified in PHF-tau, indicating that casein kinase 1
may have a role, together with glycogen synthase kinase-3
, in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease. | INTRODUCTION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Because the development of Tau pathology is related to its phosphorylation state, it is important to determine the phosphorylation sites on PHF-tau that lead to the abnormal characteristics of insolubility and aggregation that define Tau in Alzheimer brain. To date, there have been only a few reports using direct sequencing methods such as Edman degradation or mass spectrometry (MS) to identify directly the phosphorylation sites on Tau in Alzheimer disease and Tau from control human brain (8-11). Additional phosphorylation sites have been mapped using phosphorylation-dependent antibodies to Tau to label tangles and PHF-tau preparations from Alzheimer brain (12-16). In recent years, improvements in MS methods have resulted in increased sensitivity and specificity of detection of post-translational modifications on proteins. In particular, highly resolving high pressure liquid chromatography has been used to simplify the complex peptide mixtures present in protein digests, and this, combined with tandem MS/MS (LC-MS/MS), has resulted in greatly enhanced protein sequence coverage (17, 18). We report here our exploitation of this powerful technology to determine close to the full complement of phosphorylation sites on PHF-tau.
Several proline-directed and non-proline-directed protein kinases have been suggested to have a role in the generation of PHF-tau in Alzheimer brain (19), including casein kinase 1 (CK1), but this enzyme has been relatively little studied as a Tau kinase. The role of CK1
as a potential Tau kinase is of particular interest because it has been reported that CK1
protein is increased more than 30-fold in the hippocampus of Alzheimer brain compared with equivalent controls (20), although its mRNA content is increased 24-fold (21) and CK1 has also been shown to be tightly associated with PHF (22). Recently, CK1
has been reported to phosphorylate Tau at two epitopes detected using phosphospecific monoclonal antibodies to Tau, and exogenous expression of CK1
in non-neuronal cells reduces binding of Tau to microtubules (23). Of note in the context of Alzheimer disease is a report that CK1 activity is stimulated by amyloid
-peptide (A
), a component of the senile neuritic plaques that together with tangles characterize Alzheimer brain (24). Further evidence for the possible involvement of CK1 in Alzheimer disease comes from the reported influence of CK1 in the regulation of A
production in neurons (25).
In this study we present our findings of 11 previously unidentified phosphorylation sites in PHF-tau, all on serine and threonine residues. Ten of these 11 sites could be assigned unambiguously to particular hydroxyamino acids, the remaining one being on either of two closely spaced residues. Because only one of these new phosphorylation sites is proline-directed, we have investigated potential candidate Ser/Thr Tau kinases that are not dependent on Ser-Pro or Thr-Pro motifs. We report here new phosphorylation sites on Tau generated by the activities of casein kinase 1
(CK1
), casein kinase 2 (CK2), cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA), and glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3), individually and in combination. We have found that at least six of the new phosphorylation sites as well as many of the previously identified sites in PHF-tau can be generated by CK1
. The finding of a significant number of phosphorylation sites in PHF-tau for which CK1 is a strong candidate kinase, including three for which it is the only known kinase, implies that CK1 may make an important contribution to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease.
| EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES |
|---|
|
|
|---|

317 (truncated at residue 317, which exhibits increased enzyme activity relative to wild-type CK1
(26)); CK2 from a clone expressing both
and
subunits; PKA catalytic subunit,
isoform; and GSK-3
, intact and unmodified. Purified recombinant cyclin-dependent kinase-5/p25, expressed in Sf21 insect cells, was obtained from Upstate. Purification of PHF-tau from Alzheimer Brain—PHF-tau was prepared from human post-mortem Alzheimer brain, including phosphatase inhibitors, as described previously (10). Samples were analyzed on Western blots probed with antibody to Tau as described (10), except that the secondary antibody was coupled to horseradish peroxidase, and blots were developed using enhanced chemiluminescence (Amersham Biosciences).
Preparation of Tau from Human Control Brain—A heat-stable preparation of soluble Tau from control human brain was prepared in the presence of phosphatase inhibitors as described previously, omitting the chromatography stages (27).
Preparation and Purification of Recombinant Human Tau—A plasmid expressing the largest (2N4R) Tau isoform was used to prepare and purify recombinant human Tau as described previously (27).
Phosphorylation of Recombinant Tau by Protein Kinases—Recombinant human Tau (40 µg/ml) was incubated with 67 units/ml CK1
, 67 units/ml CK2, 67 units/ml GSK-3
, 167 units/ml PKA, or 19 units/ml cyclin-dependent kinase-5/p25, in 50 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, 10 mM MgCl2, 5mM dithiothreitol, 3mM ATP for 6 h at 30°C (the kinase activity units used are nanomoles/min at 30 °C).
In-gel Proteolytic Digestion of Tau—PHF-tau or in vitro phosphorylated recombinant human Tau was separated on 10% (w/v) polyacrylamide gels and stained with colloidal Coomassie Blue G. Bands corresponding to Tau were excised, reduced, alkylated, and digested with trypsin or Asp-N as described previously (28).
Tandem MS/MS of Tau Peptides—Peptides obtained by proteolytic digestion were separated by reversed-phase chromatography using an Ultimate liquid chromatography system (Dionex) and sequenced by tandem MS/MS using orthogonal quadrupole time-of-flight electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (Q-Tof microTM, Waters) as described previously (30). The mass spectral data were searched against a data base containing the sequences of all the human brain Tau isoforms using the Mascot searching algorithm (Matrix Science). Phosphopeptides and unphosphorylated peptides of Tau were identified based on the following search criteria: protease used (i.e. trypsin or AspN) with up to three missed cleavages; phosphorylation of Ser, Thr, or Tyr; carbamidomethylation of cysteine; oxidized methionine; deamidation of asparagine (Asn) and glutamine; and N-acetylation. All amino acid modifications were set as variable modifications. Phosphorylated residues were determined by manual inspection of the mass spectral MS/MS data. Confirmatory data were also obtained using multireaction monitoring (MRM) (29) on a hybrid triple quadrupole-linear ion trap mass spectrometer (QTRAP 4000 Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex). Briefly, peptide masses and major fragment ion masses for phosphopeptides of interest were obtained from previous LC-MS/MS experiments. These masses were used to allow the instrument to focus on phosphopeptides of interest thus increasing specificity and sensitivity. MRM transitions that were triggered were confirmed to be the correct peptide using conclusive MS/MS data, the loss of phosphoric acid (98 Da) from the parent, or the correct mass and charge state depending on the quality of the data.
Preparation and Treatment of Cortical Neurons with IC261—Primary cortical neurons were prepared from embryonic day 18 rats and cultured as described previously (30). Cells were maintained at a density of 106 cells/well (6-well plate) in Neurobasal medium (Invitrogen) supplemented with 2% (v/v) B27 supplement (Invitrogen), 2 mM L-glutamine, 100 IU penicillin, and 100 µg/ml streptomycin for 10 days prior to treatment. The CK1 inhibitor 3-[(2,3,6-trimethoxyphenyl)methylidenyl]-indolin-2-one (IC261, Calbiochem) was dissolved in Me2SO and stored at -20 °C as a 10 mM stock solution (31). Rat cortical neurons were treated with 10 µM IC261 (or vehicle) for 4 h and (i) either harvested by removing the medium and scraping the cells into SDS-PAGE sample buffer (32), or (ii) the medium was replaced and neurons were incubated for a further hour in the absence of IC261 to assess recovery before harvesting into SDS-PAGE sample buffer.
Western Blot Analysis of Neuronal Tau Phosphorylation—Neuronal lysates were resolved on 10% (w/v) SDS-PAGE, electroblotted onto nitrocellulose, and probed with primary antibodies. Blots were developed with IRDye800-conjugated goat anti-rabbit (Rockland Immunochemicals, Inc.) or IRdye 680-conjugated goat anti-mouse secondary antibodies (Molecular Probes). Labeled Tau was visualized using an Odyssey Infrared Imaging System (Li-Cor Biosciences).
Antibodies—The antibodies used were rabbit polyclonal antibodies to Tau, phosphorylation-independent (anti-human Tau, DAKO Cytomation, Denmark, and TP70 (33)) and phosphorylation-dependent Ser262 of Tau (Ser(P)262, Invitrogen). Mouse monoclonal antibody to
-actin (Abcam) was used to assess protein loading on blots.
|
| RESULTS |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Following in-gel digestion and MS analysis of purified PHF-tau, we detected phosphopeptides corresponding to 36 different phosphorylation sites (Fig. 1). In this study we did not detect phosphorylation at Ser208 or Ser356, residues that have previously been reported to be phosphorylated on PHF-tau, despite obtaining full sequence coverage in these regions (Fig. 1). In the majority of cases, precise phosphorylation sites were identified, but we were unable to obtain sufficiently reliable MS/MS spectral data to ascertain the phosphorylation status of some residues, and as we found in our previous study (10), a short region close to the carboxyl terminus of Tau proved to be especially intractable to MS/MS analysis. In this region we frequently identified phosphopeptides with either one or two phosphorylation sites between residues Ser412 and Ser416, a sequence that includes four closely spaced potential phosphorylation sites at Ser412, Ser413, Thr414, and Ser416, but it was not possible to identify the exact individual phosphorylated residues because of repeated poor fragmentation that yielded only weak b ions (see supplemental Table S1). We did not obtain sequence coverage of residues 127-163 in this study (Fig. 1). This region includes Thr153 that has been suggested as a possible Tau phosphorylation site present in the Tau-immunoreactive smear characteristic of Alzheimer brain (9). A short eight-residue peptide corresponding to amino acids 291-298 was also not found, and this region contains a single potentially phosphorylatable residue at Ser293. In addition, we did not detect the amino-terminal methionine residue, which we presume is removed by post-translational modification because we found that Ala2 is N-acetylated on PHF-tau.
Of the 36 phosphorylated residues we detected on PHF-tau, 11 are new sites not reported previously. This included phosphorylation on both Ser184 and Ser185, one site on either Ser184 or Ser185 having been detected by us in an earlier study (10) (Fig. 1, phosphorylation sites indicated in boldface and new sites in black and gray boxes). Nevertheless, our improved Tau sequence coverage resulted in the discovery of new phosphorylation sites, which brings to 39 (37 Ser/Thr and two Tyr) the total number of directly identified phosphorylation sites in PHF-tau. We used MRM-MS to confirm the presence of some of the novel phosphorylation sites in brain tissue from three additional cases of Alzheimer disease. The PHF-tau used for these studies was prepared as described previously (10) and above, except that the insoluble Tau was analyzed after solubilizing in SDS-PAGE sample buffer. These results showed that at least seven of the new sites were present in other Alzheimer brains and at least three of these residues were phosphorylated in all cases examined. In comparison, Tau phosphorylated at Ser422, a site suggested to be specific to Alzheimer brain, was among several phosphorylated residues that we detected in only one of the three additional cases. All the data, taken together and including both directly identified phosphorylation sites and those sites identified with phosphospecific antibodies, suggest there may be as many as 45 different phosphorylation sites on PHF-tau, although not all sites are necessarily phosphorylated in sufficient amounts for detection in all cases of Alzheimer disease.
Phosphorylation in Different Regions of PHF-tau—We found two new phosphorylation sites within the microtubule-binding region of Tau (residues 244-368), Ser258 in the first repeat (exon 9) and Ser289 within the second repeat (exon 10, only expressed in 4R isoforms), which is in an equivalent position to Ser258 (see Fig. 2). This brings the total number of phosphorylated residues contained within the microtubule-binding domain of PHF-tau to four, because phosphorylation of Ser262 in the first repeat and Ser356 in the fourth repeat have been reported previously (9-11).
The most densely phosphorylated regions of Tau, which are rich in hydroxyamino acids, are the carboxyl-terminal region (394-441) and the central region (175-238), flanking the microtubule-binding region. We discovered four new phosphorylation sites near the carboxyl terminus of PHF-tau, namely Thr414/Ser416 (only one of these is phosphorylated, but the data do not allow unambiguous assignment to one or other residue), Thr427, Ser433, and Ser435. Phosphorylated Ser416 has been reported in Alzheimer brains using a phosphospecific antibody (34), where it was primarily localized to the neuronal soma. The MS/MS spectra generated by peptides phosphorylated on Ser433 and Ser435 are shown in Fig. 3. Our results show that of the 13 Ser and Thr contained within the 50 most carboxyl terminal residues, 12 of these (92%) can be phosphorylated in PHF-tau.
|
|
The phosphopeptides isolated from PHF-tau contained varying numbers of phosphates, showing that different PHF-tau molecules were differentially phosphorylated. From four short sequences of 7-10 amino acids (210-217, 231-238, 394-404, and 412-422), each containing four or five potential sites, we obtained peptides containing up to four phosphates (supplemental Table S1). Less phosphorylated peptides from these sequences were only seen in certain combinations, suggesting the possibility of "priming" or hierarchical phosphorylation (see "Discussion").
Other Post-translational Modifications in PHF-tau—In addition to phosphorylation, we detected N-acetylation and deamidation of PHF-tau, some of which has been reported previously by others (9, 35). N-Acetylation of Ala2 is consistent with the absence of the amino-terminal methionine in PHF-tau, and this modification is also found in Tau from normal human brain (see below) (8). We detected deamidated Asn at positions 167, 265, 279, 286, 359, and 381 on PHF-tau, supporting and extending a previous report of deamidation at residues 167 and 279 in smeared Tau from Alzheimer brain (35). Such deamidation is consistent with the suggestion that PHF-tau may be N-glycosylated on Asn residues because deglycosylation can result in deamidated asparagine that could result in increased degradation of Tau (36, 37).
Phosphorylation of Tau from Control Human Brain—We obtained 85% sequence coverage of Tau from control adult human brain, based on the amino acid sequence of the longest human Tau isoform. This is equivalent to sequence coverage of 85% of the phosphorylatable residues in Tau (Fig. 4, sequenced residues in uppercase, and supplemental Table S3). Similar to PHF-tau, the initiator methionine was absent, and Ala2 was N-acetylated as reported previously (8). We detected a total of eight phosphorylation sites in autopsy-derived normal human Tau, including five new sites (Ser46, Ser199, Ser416, and two out of three phosphorylatable residues in Ser412/Ser413/Thr414) and three sites (Thr181, Ser202, and Ser404) that have been reported previously (38). We did not detect phosphorylation of Thr231 as had been reported by Morishima-Kawashima et al. (38), but this residue is contained within a short sequence of 18 amino acids for which we were unable to obtain MS/MS sequence coverage. Our results, combined with those of Morishima-Kawashima et al. (38), identified nine sites that can be phosphorylated in Tau extracted from normal adult post-mortem human brain. As with PHF-tau, we detected peptides corresponding to all six isoforms of Tau in control human brain (supplemental Table S4).
|
, CK2, PKA, and GSK-3
, based on the following: 1) their ability to phosphorylate Ser/Thr residues in the absence of an adjacent Pro residue; 2) their possible involvement in either substrate priming or response to primed substrates; and 3) their potential involvement in Alzheimer pathogenesis. Each enzyme was assessed, both individually and in combination with the other three protein kinases, by investigating the phosphorylation sites generated on recombinant human brain Tau (2N4R) following incubation in the presence of ATP.
The sequence coverage and phosphorylation sites found on Tau generated by CK1
, CK2, PKA, and GSK-3
are shown in Fig. 5. The phosphopeptides used to determine these sites are available as supplemental Tables S5-S9. The amino acid sequence coverage obtained for Tau after in vitro phosphorylation by these kinases and identified by MS/MS sequencing was 82-85% (Fig. 5), equivalent to 84-100% when measured as the percentage of potentially phosphorylatable residues. Thus we were able to obtain complete or largely complete coverage of all potential phosphorylated residues under the phosphorylation conditions employed. In all cases, we did not detect the amino-terminal methionine of recombinant Tau, although Ala2 was not acetylated, unlike in PHF-tau and Tau from control human brain.
Phosphorylation with CK1
generated 33 sites on Tau, three of which were identified as one of two closely clustered alternative sites (Fig. 5 and supplemental Table S5). This is the first study using chemical identification of CK1
phosphorylation sites on Tau. We did not detect CK1
phosphorylation of Ser202/Thr205 or Ser396/Ser404, sites previously identified using the phospho-Tau antibodies, AT8 and PHF-1, respectively (23). Because we obtained complete sequence coverage of these residues following CK1
phosphorylation, our data suggest that the stoichiometry of phosphorylation at these epitopes may be low such that corresponding phosphopeptides could not be detected by our MS protocol. CK1
phosphorylation generated nine sites on Tau that have not been shown to be phosphorylated by any other kinases (namely Thr17, Thr95, Thr101/Thr102, Ser113, Thr169, Ser238, Thr263, Ser341, and Ser433). Fifteen of the CK1
sites identified in Tau are also phosphorylated on PHF-tau. At least six of the newly identified Ser/Thr phosphorylation sites on PHF-tau are also phosphorylated by CK1
, and three of these (Ser113, Ser238, and Ser433) are not known to be phosphorylated by any other kinase, indicating that CK1
may have an important role in neurofibrillary pathology. Of the nine phosphorylation sites found on normal brain Tau, four are potential CK1 sites, three of which are in the carboxyl-terminal region.
After phosphorylation by CK2, we detected only six phosphorylation sites on Tau (Fig. 5 and supplemental Table S6), only one of which (Thr39) has been reported previously (39). Two of these additional sites were not pinpointed to a single residue. We found only three sites on Tau (Ser199, Ser400, and a site within Ser412-Ser416), which are targets of in vitro phosphorylation by CK2 and are also phosphorylated on PHF-tau. Thus, in contrast to CK1
, CK2 does not appear to favor Tau as a primary substrate and may have a less significant role than CK1
in PHF generation.
PKA phosphorylated 16 sites on Tau, two of which were localized to peptides with more than one possible phosphorylation site (Fig. 5 and supplemental Table S7). Ten of the PKA sites are also present on PHF-tau, with a further two sites that may also be present (e.g. Thr217 is phosphorylated on PHF-tau, but we were able to identify one phosphorylation site at either Thr217 or Thr220 after PKA phosphorylation). Seven of the PKA sites that we identified have not been reported previously (40-43), and at least four of these are also present on PHF-tau. Our results therefore support previous suggestions that PKA phosphorylation of Tau, possibly in conjunction with other kinases, might also have a significant part to play in tangle pathogenesis.
|
, two of which were not identified uniquely (Fig. 5 and supplemental Table S8). Of the GSK-3
sites detected in this study, 13 have not been identified previously by direct means and 15 sites are also present on PHF-tau, including at least two of the newly identified PHF-tau sites (supplemental Table 10). When all of the new GSK-3
phosphorylation sites on Tau identified here are combined with those detected in previous studies (discussed in Ref. 44), it becomes apparent that there are at least 36 residues in Tau that are targeted by this enzyme, and 27 of these sites are likely to be phosphorylated on PHF-tau. Thus GSK-3
continues to represent a good candidate for the aberrant phosphorylation of Tau in Alzheimer disease.
Phosphorylation of Recombinant Human Tau by Combined Kinases—A total of at least 52 phosphorylation sites (three being ambiguous) is obtained by combining the data for each of the four kinases (CK1
, CK2, PKA, and GSK-3
) when used separately. To compare this with simultaneous exposure to these protein kinases, as may occur in neurons, phosphorylation with these four kinases together was carried out. The combination of CK1
, CK2, PKA, and GSK-3
produced a total of 32 phosphorylation sites on Tau, of which three were ambiguous (Fig. 5 and supplemental Table S9). Therefore, this combination of kinases generated in total fewer sites than the kinases had individually, but one additional phosphorylated residue was found, at a site not detected with these kinases used individually, namely Thr111, a proline-directed site that has not been found in PHF-tau. The combination of kinases acting in concert, rather than individual kinases acting alone, may be responsible for Tau phosphorylation at this residue. However, Thr111 was the only phosphorylation site in a long peptide (supplemental Table S5), and so if this phosphorylation was because of priming it would suggest that this was at a distant site. Because CK1 and PKA have been shown previously to prime some substrates for subsequent phosphorylation by GSK-3
, it is possible that these three kinases acting in concert may also be responsible for generating several of the phosphorylation sites on PHF-tau.
|
Inhibition of CK1 in Rat Cortical Neurons Decreases Endogenous Tau Phosphorylation—Cultures of rat cortical neurons were treated with the CK1
/
inhibitor IC261 (10 µM for 4 h), and endogenous Tau was analyzed by Western blotting with two unrelated phosphorylation-independent anti-Tau antibodies (Fig. 6, A and B). The intensity of the upper Tau band was decreased by IC261, whereas that of the lower bands was increased. This shift strongly suggests that the inhibitor is causing a decrease in Tau phosphorylation. This view was supported by probing blots with a phosphorylation-dependent antibody recognizing phospho-Ser262 on Tau (Ser(P)262). Phosphorylation at Ser262 was reduced by IC261, in agreement with our MS analysis showing that Tau is phosphorylated on this residue in vitro by CK1
. Washing out the inhibitor (right-hand lanes in Fig. 6) restored the electrophoretic mobility and Ser262 phosphorylation of endogenous Tau. These results suggest that the activity of endogenous CK1 was sufficient to partially phosphorylate Tau in neurons.
| DISCUSSION |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Alternatively Spliced Tau Isoforms in PHF-tau—Three of the new phosphorylation sites that we discovered on PHF-tau, Ser68, Thr69, and Thr71, are present in the first of the two alternatively spliced, tandem amino-terminal inserts in Tau (Fig. 1). Thus these residues are present in 1N and 2N but not 0N Tau isoforms that lack these inserts. We detected these phosphorylation sites in phosphopeptides derived specifically from 1N, but not 2N, Tau isoforms, indicating that residues 68, 69, and 71 are either not phosphorylated on 2N Tau isoforms or, because the 2N isoforms are expressed only at relatively low levels compared with the other four brain Tau isoforms, phosphopeptides originating from 2N Tau may be below the detection limit of the MS/MS methods used here. We were able to identify peptides specific for 0N, 1N, and 2N, as well as three (3R) and four (4R) microtubule-binding repeats (supplemental Table S2). These results provide direct support for the previous observations of all six isoforms of Tau in PHF-tau that have been determined by specific antibody labeling (15) and by comparison of bands of dephosphorylated PHF-tau with the six recombinant human brain Tau isoforms (3, 45).
Clustering of Tau Phosphorylation Sites and Possible Sequential Phosphorylation of PHF-tau—The phosphorylation sites on PHF-tau appear to occur in clusters along the Tau molecule giving multiple phosphorylated peptides with possible mutually exclusive combinations of phosphorylation. It is therefore feasible that such sequences may represent regions in Tau where sequential phosphorylation might occur, with initial phosphorylation of a specific Ser/Thr that primes Tau for secondary phosphorylation at a nearby site. For example, in the case of residues spanning Ser210-Thr217, mono-phosphorylated peptides were identified corresponding to Ser214 and Thr217, but phosphorylation at Ser210 or Thr212 was detected only when phosphorylation at Ser214 or Thr217 was also present. Similarly, Thr231 was detected in the mono-phosphorylated form, whereas Ser235, Ser237, and Ser238 were identified only in combination with Thr231. This is an important observation because dual phosphorylation of Thr212 and Ser214 would generate the "Alzheimer-specific" epitope on Tau for the monoclonal antibody AT100 (46), and the Alzheimer-specific antibody PHF-27 requires phosphorylation of both Thr231 and Ser235 (47). Our results therefore agree with previous suggestions of a temporally ordered addition of phosphate to Tau in which phosphorylation of specific residues leads to subsequent phosphorylation at nearby amino acids in brain (48-50).
Tau Phosphorylation in Vitro, Individual and Sequential Action of Protein Kinases—Recombinant Tau was phosphorylated in vitro with individual candidate kinases to identify potential kinases for phosphorylating particular sites, and combinations of kinases to identify possible priming. Many in vitro studies of Tau phosphorylation have been reported, with in excess of 20 different protein kinases being suggested as potential candidates for Tau phosphorylation (19). The challenge now is to identify the protein kinases responsible for the pathological phosphorylation of Tau that generates PHF-tau and tangles in Alzheimer disease. Among the Tau candidate kinases, GSK-3
and cyclin-dependent kinase-5 are the most frequently cited contenders for a pathological role in the production of PHF-tau, and the results presented here suggest that CK1 may also play an important part. Notably, three sites that are phosphorylated in PHF-tau (Ser113, Ser238, and Ser433) are generated only by the action of CK1
and have not been reported to be phosphorylated by any other kinases. Taken together with previous reports of increased CK1
expression in Alzheimer brain, the co-localization of CK1
with tangles (22, 51), and the possible role of CK1 in regulation of A
secretion (25), our new data further endorse previous suggestions that CK1 may have a role to play in the generation of PHF-tau and tangle pathology in Alzheimer disease.
Both GSK-3
and CK1 can phosphorylate certain of their substrates more efficiently when they have been primed by pre-phosphorylation with other kinases (52, 53). Such substrates include
-catenin (54, 55), phosphorylation of which targets it for proteolysis, as well as other components of the Wnt signaling pathway (56, 57). CK1 can more efficiently phosphorylate some substrates, such as the tumor suppressor protein, p53, and cubitus interruptus in the Hedgehog signaling pathway, when they are pre-phosphorylated by a different priming kinase (58-60); this suggests that hierarchical phosphorylation may be mandatory for certain substrates.
Several studies point toward Tau phosphorylation being partly sequential or hierarchical. A neurofibrillary tangle-associated kinase phosphorylates Thr361 and Ser412 in Tau (61) only after pre-phosphorylation of Tau by PKA at the nearby residues Ser356 and Ser409, consistent with the substrate specificity of CK1. This PHF-tau kinase was described as having similarities to the CK1 family, and we also detected phosphorylation of Thr361 by CK1
in the present study. Previous reports showed that CK1 purified from bovine brain phosphorylated recombinant human 2N3R Tau at epitopes recognized by antibodies M4 (Thr231) and SMI-31 (Ser396 and Ser404), but not PHF-1 (Ser396/Ser404) (62), and that recombinantly expressed CK1
(
317) phosphorylated the epitopes for antibodies AT8 (Ser202/Thr205) and PHF-1 in recombinant human 2N4R Tau (23). However, we were unable to detect CK1
-catalyzed Tau phosphorylation at any of these five sites, despite obtaining sequence coverage of each. It is possible that phosphorylation at these epitopes may create strong antigenic determinants, but the stoichiometry of CK1
phosphorylation at these residues may not have been sufficient for detection using the MS technologies used here.
Our experiments to examine the potential role of CK1
in priming substrates for sequential phosphorylation identified two possible instances, involving Thr111 and Thr205. Thr111 was phosphorylated when four kinases (CK1
, CK2, GSK-3
, and PKA) were used together. Because Thr111 is adjacent to a proline residue, it is likely that GSK-3
was responsible, possibly after priming of Tau at another site (or activation of GSK-3
) by one of the other kinases. Thr111 is not a known PHF-tau site, and this was not investigated further. Thr205, a PHF-tau site identified by antibodies, has been shown to be weakly phosphorylated by GSK-3
alone (63), yet in our hands we only observed its phosphorylation after pretreatment with CK1
.5 We therefore propose that CK1
-catalyzed phosphorylation might make Tau a better substrate for GSK-3
, i.e. increase its rate of phosphorylation. Residues 175-238 and 392-441, the regions of Tau that flank the microtubule-binding repeats, contain the majority of the phosphorylation sites, and approximately three-quarters of the PHF-tau sites in these regions can be phosphorylated in vitro by CK1
, GSK-3
, or PKA. CK1
and GSK-3
are well known to recognize primed substrates, which could account for why many of the peptides recovered from these flanking regions in PHF-tau contain multiple phosphates. Indeed, priming may also be important for Tau phosphorylation in the normal brain; a peptide derived from the carboxyl-terminal region contained three phosphates although their exact locations could not be determined (supplemental Table S3), even though the overall phosphorylation level was much lower than in PHF-tau. Quantitative measurements on multiphosphorylated peptides will need to be developed to study this further.
Possible Functional Effects of Tau Hyperphosphorylation—Because phosphorylation within the microtubule-binding repeat domain (Gln244-Asn368) of Tau decreases its binding to microtubules, phosphorylation in this region is likely to have a critical function in regulating Tau binding to microtubules in neurons. Hence the presence of four phosphorylation sites identified in the microtubule-binding repeat region in PHF-tau but not control brain Tau (i.e. Ser258, Ser262, Ser289, and Ser356), including two new PHF-tau phosphorylation sites detected in this study, is highly significant. The protein kinases most closely matching this pattern of Tau phosphorylation are GSK-3
and CK1
, because each of these kinases phosphorylates all four of the sites detected in this region of PHF-tau. Consistent with this finding, we and others have found that Tau binding to microtubules is reduced when either GSK-3
or CK1
is exogenously expressed with Tau in non-neuronal cells6 (23, 64). In comparison, microtubule-affinity regulating kinase, which also disrupts Tau-microtubule binding in transfected cells, phosphorylates six sites in the microtubule-binding domain of Tau (Ser262, Ser293, Ser305, Ser320, Ser324, and Ser356), only two of which (Ser262 and Ser356) correspond to PHF-tau phosphorylation sites (65).
Our inhibition studies of endogenous CK1 (Fig. 6) suggest that CK1
and/or
is an active physiological Tau kinase in neuronal cells. We have also found that Tau exhibits a similar shift in electrophoretic mobility when phosphorylated in vitro with CK1
,7 and our finding of phosphorylation in Tau from normal control brain near its carboxyl terminus (a modification that decreases the mobility of Tau on gels), at potential CK1 sites, supports this interpretation. Although this result would be consistent with CK1 phosphorylating Tau directly, it is also possible that CK1 could activate another kinase or inactivate a phosphatase. The strong elevation of CK1
reported in Alzheimer brains (20, 21) points to a risk of severe and pathological disruption of Tau-microtubule binding, and possibly of other intracellular interactions (66).
Kinases have been identified that are capable of phosphorylating most of the chemically determined Ser/Thr residues on PHF-tau. All but five or six of these can be phosphorylated in vitro by a combination of CK1
and GSK-3
. The exceptions are Ser68, Thr71, Ser185, Ser412, Ser422, and possibly Thr414 (not a confirmed site). Of these, Ser185 can be phosphorylated by p38 MAPK (44), and Ser412 can be phosphorylated by PKA (this study) and by "PHF kinase" (61). Ser422 is a substrate for MAPKs and also for Tau-tubulin kinase 1, a neuron-specific member of the CK1 family that phosphorylates seven residues on Tau, all of which are present in PHF-tau (67-70). Tau-tubulin kinase 1 has been reported to reduce Tau solubility when exogenously expressed in human neuroblastoma cells, and this could be due to phosphorylation at Ser422 or other residues targeted by this kinase (70). Phosphorylation at Ser422 may be important in pathology as it has been reported to be necessary for the generation of A
-induced PHF-like Tau filaments in neuroblastoma cells (71).
There remain on PHF-tau two definite phosphorylation sites and one possible site for which no kinase has been identified (orphan sites). All of these phosphorylation sites correspond to newly identified PHF-tau sites reported herein, i.e. Ser68 and Thr71, with Thr414 if this is subsequently shown to be responsible for the phosphorylation identified as Thr414/Ser416; Ser416 being phosphorylated by CK1
, PKA, calcium-calmodulin kinase II, and Tau-tubulin kinase 1 (70).
Our findings therefore support the view that PKA and CK1
might be important for subsequent Tau phosphorylation by GSK-3
. Taken together with the roles of CK1 in the regulation of the intracellular trafficking of
-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme (72, 73) and in phosphorylation of presenilin (74), our data suggest that CK1 could have a role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease. It remains to be determined which sites on PHF-tau prove to be unique determinants of Alzheimer pathology, but one possibility is that phosphorylation of some or all of these orphan sites requires the concerted action of several different protein kinases to generate all of the known phosphorylation sites on PHF-tau.
Further studies are now warranted to determine the effects of Tau phosphorylated by CK1 on Tau aggregation and/or cellular toxicity as has been shown previously with Tau tubulin kinase 1 (70), Congo Red (75), and A
(71).
| FOOTNOTES |
|---|
The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Tables S1-S10. ![]()
1 Both authors contributed equally to this work. ![]()
3 Present address: William Harvey Research Institute, Barts and the London, Charterhouse Square, EC1M 6BQ London, UK. ![]()
2 To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 44-20-7848-0041; Fax: 44-20-7708-0017; E-mail: d.hanger{at}iop.kcl.ac.uk.
4 The abbreviations used are: PHF, paired helical filaments; A
, amyloid
-peptide; CK1
, casein kinase 1
; CK2, casein kinase 2; GSK-3
, glycogen synthase kinase-3
; LC-MS/MS, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry; PKA, cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase; MAPK, mitogen-activated protein kinase; MRM, multireaction monitoring. ![]()
5 M. J. Saxton, A. Seereeram, and D. P. Hanger, unpublished observations. ![]()
6 D. P. Hanger and T. Hassanali, unpublished observations. ![]()
7 A. Seereeram and D. P. Hanger, unpublished observations. ![]()
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
|---|
| REFERENCES |
|---|
|
|
|---|
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
F. Liu, J. Shi, H. Tanimukai, J. Gu, J. Gu, I. Grundke-Iqbal, K. Iqbal, and C.-X. Gong Reduced O-GlcNAcylation links lower brain glucose metabolism and tau pathology in Alzheimer's disease Brain, July 1, 2009; 132(7): 1820 - 1832. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
A. Mallavarapu, M. Thomson, B. Ullian, and J. Gunawardena Programming with models: modularity and abstraction provide powerful capabilities for systems biology J R Soc Interface, March 6, 2009; 6(32): 257 - 270. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
F. Liu, Z. Liang, J. Wegiel, Y.-W. Hwang, K. Iqbal, I. Grundke-Iqbal, N. Ramakrishna, and C.-X. Gong Overexpression of Dyrk1A contributes to neurofibrillary degeneration in Down syndrome FASEB J, September 1, 2008; 22(9): 3224 - 3233. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
I. Cuchillo-Ibanez, A. Seereeram, H. L. Byers, K.-Y. Leung, M. A. Ward, B. H. Anderton, and D. P. Hanger Phosphorylation of tau regulates its axonal transport by controlling its binding to kinesin FASEB J, September 1, 2008; 22(9): 3186 - 3195. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
C. H. Reynolds, C. J. Garwood, S. Wray, C. Price, S. Kellie, T. Perera, M. Zvelebil, A. Yang, P. W. Sheppard, I. M. Varndell, et al. Phosphorylation Regulates Tau Interactions with Src Homology 3 Domains of Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase, Phospholipase C{gamma}1, Grb2, and Src Family Kinases J. Biol. Chem., June 27, 2008; 283(26): 18177 - 18186. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| All ASBMB Journals | Molecular and Cellular Proteomics |
| Journal of Lipid Research | ASBMB Today |