Small, seeding-competent huntingtin fibrils are prominent aggregate species in brains of zQ175 Huntington's disease knock-in mice

Autor/innen

  • F. Schindler
  • N. Praedel
  • N. Neuendorf
  • S. Kunz
  • S. Schnoegl
  • M.A. Mason
  • B.A. Taxy
  • G.P. Bates
  • A. Khoshnan
  • J. Priller
  • J. Grimm
  • M. Maier
  • A. Boeddrich
  • E.E. Wanker

Journal

  • Frontiers in Neuroscience

Quellenangabe

  • Front Neurosci 15: 682172

Zusammenfassung

  • The deposition of mutant huntingtin (mHTT) protein aggregates in neurons of patients is a pathological hallmark of Huntington’s disease (HD). Previous investigations in cell-free and cell-based disease models showed mHTT exon-1 (mHTTex1) fragments with pathogenic polyglutamine (polyQ) tracts (>40 glutamines) to self-assemble into highly stable, β-sheet-rich protein aggregates with a fibrillar morphology. HD knock-in mouse models have not been extensively studied with regard to mHTT aggregation. They endogenously produce full-length mHTT with a pathogenic polyQ tract as well as mHTTex1 fragments. Here, we demonstrate that seeding-competent, fibrillar mHTT aggregates can be readily detected in brains of zQ175 knock-in HD mice. To do this, we applied a highly sensitive FRET-based protein amplification assay that is capable of detecting seeding-competent mHTT aggregate species down to the femtomolar range. Furthermore, we show that fibrillar structures with an average length of ∼200 nm can be enriched with aggregate-specific mouse and human antibodies from zQ175 mouse brain extracts through immunoprecipitations, confirming that such structures are formed in vivo. Together these studies indicate that small, fibrillar, seeding-competent mHTT structures are prominent aggregate species in brains of zQ175 mice.


DOI

doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.682172