Browsing by Author "Matsubara, Tomoyasu"

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    Novel tau filament fold in corticobasal degeneration
    (Nature Publishing group, 2020-02-12) Zhang, Wenjuan; Tarutani, Airi; Newell, Kathy L.; Murzin, Alexey G.; Matsubara, Tomoyasu; Falcon, Benjamin; Vidal, Ruben; Garringer, Holly J.; Shi, Yang; Ikeuchi, Takeshi; Murayama, Shigeo; Ghetti, Bernardino; Hasegawa, Masato; Goedert, Michel; Scheres, Sjors H. W.; Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine
    Corticobasal degeneration (CBD) is a neurodegenerative tauopathy that is characterised by motor and cognitive disturbances (1–3). A higher frequency of the H1 haplotype of MAPT, the tau gene, is present in cases of CBD than in controls (4,5) and genome-wide association studies have identified additional risk factors (6). By histology, astrocytic plaques are diagnostic of CBD (7,8), as are detergent-insoluble tau fragments of 37 kDa by SDS-PAGE (9). Like progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), globular glial tauopathy (GGT) and argyrophilic grain disease (AGD) (10), CBD is characterised by abundant filamentous tau inclusions that are made of isoforms with four microtubule-binding repeats (4R) (11–15). This distinguishes 4R tauopathies from Pick’s disease, filaments of which are made of three-repeat (3R) tau isoforms, and from Alzheimer’s disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), where both 3R and 4R tau isoforms are found in the filaments (16). Here we report the structures of tau filaments extracted from the brains of three individuals with CBD using electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM). They were identical between cases, but distinct from those of Alzheimer’s disease, Pick’s disease and CTE (17–19). The core of CBD filaments comprises residues K274-E380 of tau, spanning the last residue of R1, the whole of R2, R3 and R4, as well as 12 amino acids after R4. It adopts a novel four-layered fold, which encloses a large non-proteinaceous density. The latter is surrounded by the side chains of lysine residues 290 and 294 from R2 and 370 from the sequence after R4. CBD is the first 4R tauopathy with filaments of known structure.
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    Structures of α-Synuclein Filaments from Multiple System Atrophy
    (Springer Nature, 2020-09) Schweighauser, Manuel; Shi, Yang; Tarutani, Airi; Kametani, Fuyuki; Murzin, Alexey G.; Ghetti, Bernardino; Matsubara, Tomoyasu; Tomita, Taisuke; Ando, Takashi; Hasegawa, Kazuko; Murayama, Shigeo; Yoshida, Mari; Hasegawa, Masato; Scheres, Sjors H.W.; Goedert, Michel; Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine
    Synucleinopathies, which include multiple system atrophy (MSA), Parkinson's disease, Parkinson's disease with dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), are human neurodegenerative diseases1. Existing treatments are at best symptomatic. These diseases are characterized by the presence of, and believed to be caused by the formation of, filamentous inclusions of α-synuclein in brain cells2,3. However, the structures of α-synuclein filaments from the human brain are unknown. Here, using cryo-electron microscopy, we show that α-synuclein inclusions from the brains of individuals with MSA are made of two types of filament, each of which consists of two different protofilaments. In each type of filament, non-proteinaceous molecules are present at the interface of the two protofilaments. Using two-dimensional class averaging, we show that α-synuclein filaments from the brains of individuals with MSA differ from those of individuals with DLB, which suggests that distinct conformers or strains characterize specific synucleinopathies. As is the case with tau assemblies4-9, the structures of α-synuclein filaments extracted from the brains of individuals with MSA differ from those formed in vitro using recombinant proteins, which has implications for understanding the mechanisms of aggregate propagation and neurodegeneration in the human brain. These findings have diagnostic and potential therapeutic relevance, especially because of the unmet clinical need to be able to image filamentous α-synuclein inclusions in the human brain.