Global changes to the ubiquitin system in Huntington's disease (original) (raw)

Nature volume 448, pages 704–708 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by expansion of CAG triplet repeats in the huntingtin (HTT) gene (also called HD) and characterized by accumulation of aggregated fragments of polyglutamine-expanded HTT protein in affected neurons1,2. Abnormal enrichment of HD inclusion bodies with ubiquitin, a diagnostic characteristic of HD and many other neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases3,4, has suggested that dysfunction in ubiquitin metabolism may contribute to the pathogenesis of these diseases5,6. Because modification of proteins with polyubiquitin chains regulates many essential cellular processes including protein degradation, cell cycle, transcription, DNA repair and membrane trafficking7, disrupted ubiquitin signalling is likely to have broad consequences for neuronal function and survival. Although ubiquitin-dependent protein degradation is impaired in cell-culture models of HD8,9,10,11 and of other neurodegenerative diseases12,13, it has not been possible to evaluate the function of the ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS) in HD patients or in animal models of the disease, and a functional role for UPS impairment in neurodegenerative disease pathogenesis remains controversial14,15,16. Here we exploit a mass-spectrometry-based method to quantify polyubiquitin chains17 and demonstrate that the abundance of these chains is a faithful endogenous biomarker of UPS function. Lys 48-linked polyubiquitin chains accumulate early in pathogenesis in brains from the R6/2 transgenic mouse model of HD, from a knock-in model of HD and from human HD patients, establishing that UPS dysfunction is a consistent feature of HD pathology. Lys 63- and Lys 11-linked polyubiquitin chains, which are not typically associated with proteasomal targeting, also accumulate in the R6/2 mouse brain. Thus, HD is linked to global changes in the ubiquitin system to a much greater extent than previously recognized.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to P. Howley, R. Baker and N. Nukina for reagents. We thank D. Kirkpatrick and N. Hathaway for suggestions, and J.-P. Vonsattel and the New York Brain Bank for the human brain tissue. This work was supported by a predoctoral training grant from NIGMS (E.J.B.), a small business innovation research grant from NINDS (H.S.), grants from the Huntington’s Disease Society of America Coalition for the Cure, Hereditary Disease Foundation and High Q Foundation (G.P.B. and R.R.K.), and a grant from the Wellcome Trust (G.P.B.).

Author Contributions E.J.B., T.A.S., C.H.B., H.S. and R.R.K. devised the overall proteomic approach. E.J.B. performed all of the biochemical analyses, the pull-down assays and, together with T.A.S., obtained and analysed all the mass spectrometry data. All of the mouse breeding and dissection was performed by B.W. and G.P.B. T.S.Z. performed all experiments in Supplementary Fig. 2 and the analysis of the Hdh Q150/Q150 knock-in mice. K.-Y.R. contributed the real-time RT–PCR data in Supplementary Fig. 3 and performed the ubiquitin ELISA on R6/2 and control mice. E.J.B. and R.R.K. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA,
    Eric J. Bennett, Kwon-Yul Ryu, Tatiana S. Zaitseva & Ron R. Kopito
  2. PPD Biomarker Discovery Inc., 1505 O’Brien Drive, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA,
    Thomas A. Shaler, Christopher H. Becker & Howard Schulman
  3. Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics, King’s College London School of Medicine, London SE1 9RT, UK,
    Ben Woodman & Gillian P. Bates

Authors

  1. Eric J. Bennett
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  2. Thomas A. Shaler
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  3. Ben Woodman
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  4. Kwon-Yul Ryu
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  5. Tatiana S. Zaitseva
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  6. Christopher H. Becker
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  7. Gillian P. Bates
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  8. Howard Schulman
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  9. Ron R. Kopito
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Correspondence toRon R. Kopito.

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H.S., T.A.S. and C.H.B. are employees of PPD Biomarker Discovery Inc.

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Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Discussion, Supplementary Figures S1-S7 with Legends and Supplementary Table S1. (PDF 377 kb)

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Bennett, E., Shaler, T., Woodman, B. et al. Global changes to the ubiquitin system in Huntington's disease.Nature 448, 704–708 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06022

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Editorial Summary

Ubiquitin inclusions

In patients with the neurodegenerative disorder Huntington's disease, the neurons contain abnormal protein inclusion bodies enriched with ubiquitin. It has been suggested that alterations in the cellular ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation system contribute to the disease. A mass spectrometry analysis of the brains of Huntington's disease patients and of several mouse models of the disease confirms that ubiquitin chains are ever-present in protein inclusions, suggesting that a general dysfunction of this system may contribute to the disease process. These observations point to ubiquitin as possible diagnostic tool, and since abnormal enrichment of ubiquitin in neuropathological lesions is also a feature of Alzheimer's disease, it may be that these neurologically diverse diseases share fundamental molecular features.