Abstract

Cellular oxidative stress serves as a common denominator in many neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson's disease. Here we use in-cell NMR spectroscopy to study the fate of the oxidation-damaged Parkinson's disease protein alpha-synuclein (α-Syn) in non-neuronal and neuronal mammalian cells. Specifically, we deliver methionine-oxidized, isotope-enriched α-Syn into cultured cells and follow intracellular protein repair by endogenous enzymes at atomic resolution. We show that N-terminal α-Syn methionines Met1 and Met5 are processed in a stepwise manner, with Met5 being exclusively repaired before Met1. By contrast, C-terminal methionines Met116 and Met127 remain oxidized and are not targeted by cellular enzymes. In turn, persisting oxidative damage in the C-terminus of α-Syn diminishes phosphorylation of Tyr125 by Fyn kinase, which ablates the necessary priming event for Ser129 modification by CK1. These results establish that oxidative stress can lead to the accumulation of chemically and functionally altered α-Syn in cells.

Highlights

  • Cellular oxidative stress serves as a common denominator in many neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease

  • We find that endogenous cellular enzymes efficiently process modified Met[1] and Met[5] of a-Syn, whereas Met[116] and Met[127] remain oxidized

  • We used NMR spectroscopy to verify that complete oxidation of Met[1], Met[5], Met[116] and Met[127] did not alter the overall monomeric, disordered conformation of isolated a-Syn in vitro (Fig. 1c), which we independently confirmed using size exclusion chromatography (SEC), circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering (DLS; Supplementary Fig. 1a–d)

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Cellular oxidative stress serves as a common denominator in many neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. We investigated the cross-peak positions of Ac-Met[1], Asp[2], Met[5], Lys[6], Leu[8] and Ser[9] in the in-cell NMR spectra of (U)-15N enriched a-Syn, which collectively serve as excellent indicators of the oxidation states of Met[1] and Met[5]

Results
Conclusion

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.