Neurochondrin interacts with the SMN protein suggesting a novel mechanism for spinal muscular atrophy pathology

Functions and mechanisms of the GPCR adaptor protein Norbin

Norbin (Neurochondrin, NCDN) is a highly conserved 79 kDa adaptor protein that was first identified more than a quarter of a century ago as a gene up-regulated in rat hippocampus upon induction of long-term potentiation. Most research has focussed on the role of Norbin in the nervous system, where the protein is highly expressed. Norbin regulates neuronal morphology and synaptic plasticity, and is essential for normal brain development and homeostasis. Dysregulation of Norbin is linked to a variety of neurological conditions. Recently, Norbin was shown to be expressed in myeloid cells as well as neurons. Myeloid-cell specific deletion revealed an important role of Norbin as a suppressor of neutrophil-derived innate immunity. Norbin limits the ability of neutrophils to clear bacterial infections by curbing the responsiveness of these cells to inflammatory and infectious stimuli. Mechanistically, Norbin regulates cell responses through binding to its interactors, in particular to a wide range of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Norbin association with GPCRs controls GPCR trafficking and signalling. Other important Norbin interactors are the Rac guanine-nucleotide exchange factor P-Rex1 and protein kinase A. Downstream signalling pathways regulated by Norbin include ERK, Ca2+ and the small GTPase Rac. Here, we review the current understanding of Norbin structure, expression and its roles in health and disease. We also explore Norbin signalling through its interactors, with a particular focus on GPCR trafficking and signalling. Finally, we discuss avenues that could be pursued in the future to increase our understanding of Norbin biology.

N-Acetylglucosamine Kinase-Small Nuclear Ribonucleoprotein Polypeptide N Interaction Promotes Axodendritic Branching in Neurons via Dynein-Mediated Microtubule Transport

N-acetylglucosamine kinase (NAGK) has been identified as an anchor protein that facilitates neurodevelopment with its non-canonical structural role. Similarly, small nuclear ribonucleoprotein polypeptide N (SNRPN) regulates neurodevelopment and cognitive ability. In our previous study, we revealed the interaction between NAGK and SNRPN in the neuron. However, the precise role in neurodevelopment is elusive. In this study, we investigate the role of NAGK and SNRPN in the axodendritic development of neurons. NAGK and SNRPN interaction is significantly increased in neurons at the crucial stages of neurodevelopment. Furthermore, overexpression of the NAGK and SNRPN proteins increases axodendritic branching and neuronal complexity, whereas the knockdown inhibits neurodevelopment. We also observe the interaction of NAGK and SNRPN with the dynein light-chain roadblock type 1 (DYNLRB1) protein variably during neurodevelopment, revealing the microtubule-associated delivery of the complex. Interestingly, NAGK and SNRPN proteins rescued impaired axodendritic development in an SNRPN depletion model of Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cell neurons. Taken together, these findings are crucial in developing therapeutic approaches for neurodegenerative diseases.

A postzygotic de novo NCDN mutation identified in a sporadic FTLD patient results in neurochondrin haploinsufficiency and altered FUS granule dynamics

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a heterogeneous clinical disorder characterized by progressive abnormalities in behavior, executive functions, personality, language and/or motricity. A neuropathological subtype of FTD, frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD)-FET, is characterized by protein aggregates consisting of the RNA-binding protein fused in sarcoma (FUS). The cause of FTLD-FET is not well understood and there is a lack of genetic evidence to aid in the investigation of mechanisms of the disease. The goal of this study was to identify genetic variants contributing to FTLD-FET and to investigate their effects on FUS pathology. We performed whole-exome sequencing on a 50-year-old FTLD patient with ubiquitin and FUS-positive neuronal inclusions and unaffected parents, and identified a de novo postzygotic nonsense variant in the NCDN gene encoding Neurochondrin (NCDN), NM_014284.3:c.1206G > A, p.(Trp402*). The variant was associated with a ~ 31% reduction in full-length protein levels in the patient’s brain, suggesting that this mutation leads to NCDN haploinsufficiency. We examined the effects of NCDN haploinsufficiency on FUS and found that depleting primary cortical neurons of NCDN causes a reduction in the total number of FUS-positive cytoplasmic granules. Moreover, we found that these granules were significantly larger and more highly enriched with FUS. We then examined the effects of a loss of FUS function on NCDN in neurons and found that depleting cells of FUS leads to a decrease in NCDN protein and mRNA levels. Our study identifies the NCDN protein as a likely contributor of FTLD-FET pathophysiology. Moreover, we provide evidence for a negative feedback loop of toxicity between NCDN and FUS, where loss of NCDN alters FUS cytoplasmic dynamics, which in turn has an impact on NCDN expression.

Spinal Muscular Atrophy Patient iPSC-Derived Motor Neurons Display Altered Proteomes at Early Stages of Differentiation

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of motor neurons (MN) in the spinal cord leading to progressive muscle atrophy and weakness. SMA is caused by mutations in the survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1) gene, resulting in reduced levels of survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. The mechanisms that link SMN deficiency to selective motor neuron dysfunction in SMA remain largely unknown. We present here, for the first time, a comprehensive quantitative TMT-10plex proteomics analysis that covers the development of induced pluripotent stem cell-derived MNs from both healthy individuals and SMA patients. We show that the proteomes of SMA samples segregate from controls already at early stages of neuronal differentiation. The altered proteomic signature in SMA MNs is associated with mRNA splicing, ribonucleoprotein biogenesis, organelle organization, cellular biogenesis, and metabolic processes. We highlight several known SMN-binding partners and evaluate their expression changes during MN differentiation. In addition, we compared our study to human and mouse in vivo proteomic studies revealing distinct and similar signatures. Altogether, our work provides a comprehensive resource of molecular events during early stages of MN differentiation, containing potentially therapeutically interesting protein expression profiles for SMA.

CCCH-zinc finger antiviral protein relieves immunosuppression of T cell induced by avian leukosis virus subgroup J via NLP-PKC-δ-NFAT pathway

CCCH-zinc finger antiviral protein (ZAP) can recognize and induce the degradation of mRNAs and proteins of certain viruses, as well as exert its antiviral activity by activating T cell. However, the mechanism of ZAP mediating T cell activation during virus infection remains unclear. Here, we found a potential function of ZAP that relieves immunosuppression of T cell induced by avian leukosis virus subgroup J (ALV-J) via a novel signaling pathway that involves norbin like protein (NLP), protein kinase C delta (PKC-δ) and nuclear factor of activated T cell (NFAT). Specifically, ZAP expression activated T cells by promoting the dephosphorylation and nuclear translocation of NFAT. Furthermore, knockdown of ZAP weakened the reactivity and antiviral response of T cells. Mechanistically, ZAP reduced PKC-δ activity by up-regulating and reactivating NLP through competitively binding with viral protein. Knockdown of NLP decreased the dephosphorylation of PKC-δ by ZAP expression. Moreover, we showed that knockdown of PKC-δ reduced the phosphorylation levels of NFAT and enhanced its nuclear translocation. Taken together, these data revealed that ZAP relieves immunosuppression caused by ALV-J and mediates T cell activation through NLP-PKC-δ-NFAT pathway. Importance The evolution of host defense system is driven synchronously in the process of resisting virus invasion. Accordingly, host innate defense factors exert effectively work in suppressing virus replication. However, it remains unclear that whether the host innate defense factors are involved in antiviral immune response against the invasion of immunosuppressive viruses. Here, we found that CCCH-type zinc finger antiviral protein (ZAP) effectively worked in resistance on immunosuppression caused by avian leukosis virus subgroup J (ALV-J), a classic immunosuppressive virus. Evidence showed that ZAP released the phosphatase activity of NLP inhibited by ALV-J and further activated NFAT by inactivating PKC-δ. This novel molecular mechanism that ZAP regulates antiviral immune response by mediating NLP-PKC-δ-NFAT pathway has greatly enriched the understanding of the functions of host innate defense factors and provided important scientific ideas and theoretical basis for the research of immunosuppressive virus and antiviral immunity.

Drug Discovery of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) from the Computational Perspective: A Comprehensive Review

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), one of the leading inherited causes of child mortality, is a rare neuromuscular disease arising from loss-of-function mutations of the survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1) gene, which encodes the SMN protein. When lacking the SMN protein in neurons, patients suffer from muscle weakness and atrophy, and in the severe cases, respiratory failure and death. Several therapeutic approaches show promise with human testing and three medications have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to date. Despite the shown promise of these approved therapies, there are some crucial limitations, one of the most important being the cost. The FDA-approved drugs are high-priced and are shortlisted among the most expensive treatments in the world. The price is still far beyond affordable and may serve as a burden for patients. The blooming of the biomedical data and advancement of computational approaches have opened new possibilities for SMA therapeutic development. This article highlights the present status of computationally aided approaches, including in silico drug repurposing, network driven drug discovery as well as artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted drug discovery, and discusses the future prospects.

Autophagy in motor neuron diseases

Motor neuron diseases (MNDs) are a wide group of neurodegenerative disorders characterized by the degeneration of a specific neuronal type located in the central nervous system, the motor neuron (MN). There are two main types of MNs, spinal and cortical MNs and depending on the type of MND, one or both types are affected. Cortical MNs innervate spinal MNs and these control a variety of cellular targets, being skeletal muscle their main one which is also affected in MNDs. A correct functionality of autophagy is necessary for the survival of all cellular types and it is particularly crucial for neurons, given their postmitotic and highly specialized nature. Numerous studies have identified alterations of autophagy activity in multiple MNDs. The scientific community has been particularly prolific in reporting the role that autophagy plays in the most common adult MND, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, although many studies have started to identify physiological and pathological functions of this catabolic system in other MNDs, such as spinal muscular atrophy and spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy. The degradation of selective cargo by autophagy and how this process is altered upon the presence of MND-causing mutations is currently also a matter of intense investigation, particularly regarding the selective autophagic clearance of mitochondria. Thorough reviews on this field have been recently published. This chapter will cover the current knowledge on the functionality of autophagy and lysosomal homeostasis in the main MNDs and other autophagy-related topics in the MND field that have risen special interest in the research community.

Neurochondrin neurological autoimmunity

Objectives

To describe the neurologic spectrum and treatment outcomes for neurochondrin-IgG positive cases identified serologically in the Mayo Clinic Neuroimmunology Laboratory.

Methods

Archived serum and CSF specimens previously scored positive for IgGs that stained mouse hippocampal tissue in a nonuniform synaptic pattern by immunofluorescence assay (89 among 616,025 screened, 1993–2019) were reevaluated. Antibody characterization experiments revealed specificity for neurochondrin, confirmed by recombinant protein assays.

Results

IgG in serum (9) or CSF (4) from 8 patients yielded identical neuron-restricted CNS patterns, most pronounced in hippocampus (stratum lucidum in particular), cerebellum (Purkinje cells and molecular layer), and amygdala. All were neurochondrin-IgG positive. Five were women; median symptom onset age was 43 years (range, 30–69). Of 7 with clinical data, 6 presented with rapidly progressive cerebellar ataxia, brainstem signs, or both; 1 had isolated unexplained psychosis 1 year prior. Five of 6 had cerebellar signs, 4 with additional brainstem symptoms or signs (eye movement abnormalities, 3; dysphagia, 2; nausea and vomiting, 1). One patient with brainstem signs (vocal cord paralysis and VII nerve palsy) had accompanying myelopathy (longitudinally extensive abnormality on MRI; aquaporin-4-IgG and myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein-IgG negative). The 7th patient had small fiber neuropathy only. Just 1 of 7 had contemporaneous cancer (uterine). Six patients with ataxia or brainstem signs received immunotherapy, but just 1 remained ambulatory. At last follow-up, 5 had MRI evidence of severe cerebellar atrophy.

Conclusion

In our series, neurochondrin autoimmunity was usually accompanied by a nonparaneoplastic rapidly progressive rhombencephalitis with poor neurologic outcomes. Other phenotypes and occasional paraneoplastic causes may occur.

Pathologic Alterations in the Proteome of Synaptosomes from a Mouse Model of Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a human genetic disorder characterized by muscle weakness, muscle atrophy, and death of motor neurons. SMA is caused by mutations or deletions in a gene called survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1). SMN1 is a housekeeping gene, but the most prominent pathologies in SMA are atrophy of myofibers and death of motor neurons. Further, degeneration of neuromuscular junctions, of synapses, and of axonal regions are features of SMA disease. Here, we have investigated the proteome dynamics of central synapses in P14 Smn^2B/- mice, a model of SMA. Label-free quantitative proteomics on isolated synaptosomes from spinal cords of these animals identified 2030 protein groups. Statistical data analysis revealed 65 specific alterations in the proteome of the central synapses at the early onset stage of disease. Functional analysis of the dysregulated proteins indicated a significant enrichment of proteins associated with mitochondrial dynamics, cholesterol biogenesis, and protein clearance. These pathways represent potential targets for therapy development with the goal of providing stability to the central synapses, thereby preserving neuronal integrity in the context of SMA disease. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD012850.

Long-term iron exposure causes widespread molecular alterations associated with memory impairment in mice

Limited literature available indicates the neurotoxic effects of excessive iron, however, a deep understanding of iron neurotoxicity needs to be developed. In this study, we evaluated the toxic effects of excessive iron on learning and cognitive function in long-term iron exposure (oral, 10 mg/L, 6 months) of mice by behavioral tests including novel object recognition test, step-down passive avoidance test and Morris water maze test, and further analyzed differential expression of hippocampal proteins. The behavioral tests consistently showed that iron treatment caused cognitive defects of the mice. Proteomic analysis revealed 66 differentially expressed hippocampal proteins (30 increased and 36 decreased) in iron-treated mice as compared with the control ones. Bioinformatics analysis showed that the dysregulated proteins mainly included: synapse-associated proteins (i.e. synaptosomal-associated protein 25 (SNAP25), complexin-1 (CPLX1), vesicle-associated membrane protein 2 (VAMP2), neurochondrin (NCDN)); mitochondria-related proteins (i.e. ADP/ATP translocase 1 (SLC25A4), 14-3-3 protein zeta/delta (YWHAZ)); cytoskeleton proteins (i.e. neurofilament light polypeptide (NEFL), tubulin beta-2B chain (TUBB2B), tubulin alpha-4A chain (TUBA4A)). The findings suggest that the dysregulations of synaptic, mitochondrial, and cytoskeletal proteins may be involved in iron-triggered memory impairment. This study provides new insights into the molecular mechanisms of iron neurotoxicity.

The role of survival motor neuron protein (SMN) in protein homeostasis

Ever since loss of survival motor neuron (SMN) protein was identified as the direct cause of the childhood inherited neurodegenerative disorder spinal muscular atrophy, significant efforts have been made to reveal the molecular functions of this ubiquitously expressed protein. Resulting research demonstrated that SMN plays important roles in multiple fundamental cellular homeostatic pathways, including a well-characterised role in the assembly of the spliceosome and biogenesis of ribonucleoproteins. More recent studies have shown that SMN is also involved in other housekeeping processes, including mRNA trafficking and local translation, cytoskeletal dynamics, endocytosis and autophagy. Moreover, SMN has been shown to influence mitochondria and bioenergetic pathways as well as regulate function of the ubiquitin-proteasome system. In this review, we summarise these diverse functions of SMN, confirming its key role in maintenance of the homeostatic environment of the cell.

First person – Luke Thompson

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Luke Thompson is the first author on ‘Neurochondrin interacts with the SMN protein suggesting a novel mechanism for spinal muscular atrophy pathology’, published in Journal of Cell Science. Luke conducted the research in this article while a PhD student in the lab of Dr Judith Sleeman at the University of St Andrews, UK. He will be joining Prof. Elliot Androphy's lab group at Indiana University, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow, investigating the role of the coatomer proteins and associated factors in neuronal function.