Posts tagged lysosomes

To remain healthy, the body’s cells must properly manage their waste recycling centers. Problems with these compartments, known as lysosomes, lead to a number of debilitating and sometimes lethal conditions.

Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified an unusual cause of the lysosomal storage disorder called mucolipidosis III, at least in a subset of patients. This rare disorder causes skeletal and heart abnormalities and can result in a shortened lifespan. But unlike most genetic diseases that involve dysfunctional or missing proteins, the culprit is a normal protein that ends up in the wrong place.

Image caption: In normal cells, phosphotransferase (green) is shown overlapping with the Golgi apparatus (red), which indicates that phosphotransferase is located in the Golgi, where it should be (Credit: Eline van Meel, PhD)

“There is a lot of interest and study about how cells distribute proteins to the right parts of the cell,” said senior author Stuart A. Kornfeld, MD, PhD, the David C. and Betty Farrell Professor of Medicine. “Our study has identified one of the few examples of a genetic disease caused by the misplacement of a protein. The protein functions just fine. It just doesn’t stay in the right place.”

The right place, in this case, is the Golgi apparatus, the cell’s protein packaging center. The protein in question – phosphotransferase – normally resides in the Golgi, where its job is to attach address labels to proteins bound for the lysosome. There are 60 such lysosomal proteins, and all of them must be properly labeled if they are to end up in a lysosome, where they recycle waste.

Image caption: In mutant cells, the protein phosphotransferase (green) is spread beyond the Golgi (red). Outside the Golgi, this wayward phosphotransferase is no longer able to perform its job of properly addressing enzymes bound for the lysosome (Credit: Eline van Meel, PhD)

Kornfeld and his colleagues, including first author Eline van Meel, PhD, postdoctoral research associate, showed that the phosphotransferase protein responsible for adding the address label starts out in the Golgi as it should, but seems to lack the signal to keep it there.

“Under normal circumstances, the phosphotransferase moves up through the Golgi, but then it’s recaptured and sent back,” Kornfeld said. “Our study shows that the mutant phosphotransferase moves up but is not recaptured. Ironically, the phosphotransferase that escapes the Golgi ends up in the lysosomes, where it is degraded.”

Because phosphotransferase gradually wanders away from the Golgi, a low level of lysosomal enzymes end up being properly addressed, but at perhaps 20 percent of the normal amount.

“In many lysosomal storage disorders, such as Tay-Sachs or Gaucher’s disease, only one out of the 60 enzymes is missing from the lysosome,” Kornfeld said. “But the mislocalization of phosphotranferase causes the misdirection of all 60 lysosomal enzymes.”

While the errant phosphotransferase ends up being degraded in the lysosome, the resulting misdirected lysosomal proteins end up in the bloodstream. As a result, children with this disorder have lysosomal proteins in their blood at levels 10 to 20 times higher than normal. But because some get to the lysosome at a low level, people with mucolipidosis III don’t have the most severe form of the disease.

“Type III patients live into adulthood, but they’re very impaired,” said Kornfeld. “They have joint and heart problems and have trouble walking. In the most severe form, type II, there is zero activity of phosphotransferase. None of the 60 enzymes are properly tagged, so these patients’ lysosomes are empty. Children with type II usually die by age 10.”

Having implicated wayward phosphotransferase in this lysosomal storage disorder, Kornfeld and his colleagues are investigating what goes wrong that allows it to escape the Golgi.

“We think there must be some protein in the cell that recognizes phosphotransferase when it gets to the end of the Golgi, binds it and takes it back,” said Kornfeld. “Now we’re trying to understand how that works.”

(Source: news.wustl.edu)

If Alzheimer’s disease is to be treated in the future it requires an early diagnosis, which is not yet possible. Now researchers at higher education institutions such as Linköping University have identified six proteins in spinal fluid that can be used as markers for the illness.

Alzheimer’s causes great suffering and has a one hundred percent fatality rate. The breakdown of brain cells has been in progress for ten years or more by the time symptoms begin to appear. Currently there is no treatment that can stop the process.

(Image: Human neuroblastoma with cell nucleus in blue; beta amyloid as red aggregates within green-tinted lysosomes. Photo: Lotta Agholme.)

Most researchers now agree that one cause of the illness is toxic accumulations – plaques – of the beta amyloid protein. In a healthy brain, the cells are cleansed of such surplus products through lysosomes, the cells’ “waste disposal facilities” (green in the picture).

“In victims of Alzheimer’s, something happens to the lysosomes so that they can’t manage to take care of the surplus of beta amyloid. They fill up with junk that normally is broken down into its component parts and recycled,” says Katarina Kågedal, reader in Experimental Pathology at Linköping University. She led the study that is now being published in Neuromolecular Medicine.

The researchers’ hypothesis was that these changes in the brain’s lysosomal network could be reflected in the spinal fluid, which surrounds the brain’s various parts and drains down into the spinal column. They studied samples of spinal marrow from 20 Alzheimer’s patients and an equal number of healthy control subjects. The screening was aimed at 35 proteins that are associated with the lysosomal network.

“Six of these had clearly increased in the patients; none of them were previously known as markers for Alzheimer’s,” says Kågedal.

Her hope is that the group’s discovery will contribute to early diagnoses of the illness, which is necessary in the first stage in order to be able to begin reliable clinical tests of candidates for drugs. But perhaps the six lysosomal proteins could also be “drug targets” – targets for developing drugs.

“It may be a question of strengthening protection against plaque formation or reactivating the lysosomes so that they manage to break down the plaque,” Kågedal says.

The study was conducted on 20 anonymised, archived spinal marrow samples and the results were confirmed afterwards on an independent range of samples of equal size. All samples were provided by the Laboratory for Clinical Chemistry at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

(Source: liu.se)

Similarities found between HIV-associated brain damage and impairment from genetic fat-storage disease

Johns Hopkins scientists have found that levels of certain fats found in cerebral spinal fluid can predict which patients with HIV are more likely to become intellectually impaired.

The researchers believe that these fat markers reflect disease-associated changes in how the brain metabolizes these fat molecules. These changes disrupt the brain cells’ ability to regulate the activity of cells’ “garbage disposals” meant to degrade and flush the brain of molecular debris. In this case, too much cholesterol and a fat known as sphingomyelin build up in the lysosomes — the garbage disposals — backing up waste and leading to often debilitating cognitive declines. 

As many as half of patients infected with HIV will develop some form of cognitive impairment, ranging from mild (trouble counting change or driving a car) to frank dementia (an inability to manage activities of every day life), but no tests have been available to predict which people were more likely to suffer cognitive losses.

 “Every researcher of neurodegenerative disease is chasing biomarkers for the same reason: It’s better to identify problems before they strike,” says Norman J. Haughey, Ph.D., an associate professor in the departments of neurology and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He led the current study described online in the journal Neurology.

“It’s very hard to reverse brain damage after it starts,” he says. “Instead, we want to figure out who is likely to lose cognitive function and stop the damage before it happens.”

Haughey and his team analyzed 321 cerebral spinal fluid samples collected from seven test sites across the continental United States, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The samples came from 291 HIV-positive participants and 30 HIV-negative subjects. The investigators found that early accumulations of a small number of these fat molecules could predict the probability of cognitive decline. As cognitive function declined in these patients, the number of different types of fat molecules that accumulated increased. The types of accumulating fat molecules in HIV were very similar to those that accumulate in inherited forms of a class of diseases called lysosomal storage disorders. This suggests that in some HIV-infected patients, the brain is retaining more of these fats, and this may disrupt the function of lysosomes.

Haughey says he believes some of these impairments in the metabolism of these fats found in people with HIV stems from the infection itself, while others may be linked to the lifesaving antiretroviral therapy taken by most people with HIV. The medications have been associated with elevated blood cholesterol and triglycerides, along with a host of other side effects. Those with HIV are now taking these drugs for decades and the complications from long-term use have not been well studied, he says.

The similarities between the metabolic disturbances in HIV-infected individuals and those apparent in lysosomal storage disorders are enabling Haughey and his team to collaborate with researchers who study genetic lysosomal storage diseases, and who are developing experimental treatments to clear the fat buildup. They are currently exploring dietary and pharmacological interventions designed to restore balance that could potentially restore brain metabolism in HIV-infected individuals, and in doing so could promote good brain health by ensuring the lysosomes function properly.

(Source: hopkinsmedicine.org)

UCSF Researchers Seek Way to Boost Parkin to Fight Both Diseases

A protein at the center of Parkinson’s disease research now also has been found to play a key role in causing the destruction of bacteria that cause tuberculosis, according to scientists led by UC San Francisco microbiologist and tuberculosis expert Jeffery Cox, PhD.

The protein, named Parkin, already is the focus of intense investigation in Parkinson’s disease, in which its malfunction is associated with a loss of nerve cells. Cox and colleagues now report that Parkin also acts on tuberculosis, triggering destruction of the bacteria by immune cells known as macrophages. Results appear online today (September 4, 2013) in the journal Nature.

The finding suggests that disease-fighting strategies already under investigation in pre-clinical studies for Parkinson’s disease might also prove useful in fighting tuberculosis, according to Cox. Cox is investigating ways to ramp up Parkin activity in mice infected with tuberculosis using a strategy similar to one being explored by his UCSF colleague Kevan Shokat, PhD, as a way to ward off neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease.

Globally, tuberculosis kills 1.4 million people each year, spreading from person to person through the air. Parkinson’s disease, the most common neurodegenerative movement disorder, also affects millions of mostly elderly people worldwide.

Cox homed in on the enzyme Parkin as a common element in Parkinson’s and tuberculosis through his investigations of how macrophages engulf and destroy bacteria. In a sense the macrophage — which translates from Greek as “big eater” — gobbles down foreign bacteria, through a process scientists call xenophagy.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, along with a few other types of bacteria, including Salmonella and leprosy-causing Mycobacterium leprae, are different from other kinds of bacteria in that, like viruses, they need to get inside cells to mount a successful infection.

The battle between macrophage and mycobacterium can be especially intense. M. tuberculosis invades the macrophage, but then becomes engulfed in a sac within the macrophage that is pinched off from the cell’s outer membrane. The bacteria often escape this intracellular jail by secreting a protein that degrades the sac, only to be targeted yet again by molecular chains made from a protein called ubiquitin. Previously, Cox discovered molecules that escort these chained mycobacteria to more secure confinement within compartments inside cells called lysosomes, where the bacteria are destroyed.

The cells of non-bacterial organisms ranging in complexity from baker’s yeast to humans also use a similar mechanism — called autophagy — to dispose of their own unneeded molecules or worn out cellular components. Among the most abundant and crucial of these components are the cell’s mitochondria, metabolic powerhouses that convert food molecules into a source of energy that the cell can readily use to carry out its everyday housekeeping chores, as well as its more specialized functions.

Like other cellular components, mitochondria can wear out and malfunction, and often require replacement. The process through which mitochondria are disposed of, called mitophagy, depends on Parkin.

Cox became curious about the enzyme when he learned that specific, naturally occurring variations in the Parkin gene, called polymorphisms, are associated with increased susceptibility to tuberculosis infection.

“Because of the commonalities between mitophagy and the xenophagy of intracellular mycobacteria, as well as the links between Parkin gene polymorphisms and increased susceptibility to bacterial infection in humans, we speculated that Parkin may also be recruited to M. tuberculosis and target it for xenophagy,” Cox said.

In both mouse and human macrophages infected with M. tuberculosis in the lab, Parkin played a key role in fighting the bacteria, Cox and colleagues found. In addition, genetically engineered mice lacking Parkin died when infected with M. tuberculosis, while mice with normal Parkin survived infection.

The involvement of Parkin in targeting both damaged mitochondria and infectious mycobacteria arose long ago in evolution, Cox argues. As part of the Nature study, the research team found that Parkin-deficient mice and flies – creatures quite distant from humans in evolutionary time – also are more sensitive than normal mice and flies to intracellular bacterial infections.

Looking back more than 1 billion years, Cox noted that mitochondria evolved from bacteria that were taken up by cells in a symbiotic relationship.

In the same way that the immune system recognizes infectious bacteria as foreign, Cox said, “The evolutionary origin of mitochondria from bacteria suggests that perhaps mitochondrial dysfunction triggers the recognition of a mitochondrian as non-self.”

Having now demonstrated the importance of Parkin in fighting mycobacterial infection, Cox has begun working with Shokat to find a way to boost Parkin activity against cell-invading bacteria. “We are exploring the possibility that small-molecule drugs could be developed to activate Parkin to better fight tuberculosis infection,” Cox said.

(Source: newswise.com)