Cell Rep: breakthrough! Improved proteins can prevent Alzheimer's disease!

June 24, 2019 / biogood / amyloid precursor protein (APP) has been considered as the main cause of Alzheimer's disease One of its fragments, amyloid peptide, splits and accumulates in the brain, leading to a swollen white sphere called the age spot, a sign of the disease However, in a recent study published in the journal Cell reports, researchers at the University of Chicago revealed the broad role of APP in brain signaling Photo source: NIH, Lennart mucke, University of California, San Francisco, a long neglected part for many years, researchers mainly focus on the amino acid sequence encoded by a β segment in app, such as a dormant monster waiting for release However, in this new study, Angele parent, an associate professor of neurobiology, and her team demonstrated that other parts of a chopped app chain are also important One of them plays a crucial role in consolidating the spatiotemporal learning and memory of the brain, which can prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease under appropriate circumstances This long neglected segment, when connected to the cell membrane, can participate in a signaling mechanism that triggers the formation of new memories In order to facilitate this connection, parent and his team made a viscous lipid anchor protein with natural app The modified app fragment is called aicd, which is simple in structure but powerful in function Six months after the birth of the mice, the researchers injected them with a virus that promotes the high expression of aicd in the brain, with surprising results The mice were genetically engineered to develop aggressive Alzheimer's disease when they were young Normally, without the additional aicd provided by the researchers, they would have advanced symptoms of the disease (equivalent to a young human being) at the age of six months After injecting the virus, parent and her team tested the ability of mice to form spatiotemporal memory A mouse is a curious but changeable animal With the help of aicd, the mice successfully recovered or ignored previously explored objects and places On the other hand, mice in the control group with Alzheimer's disease expressed less aicd, and they did not know the so-called familiar objects and positions at all "When we looked at mice expressing aicd, they were almost normal," parent said It's like these mice never show signs of Alzheimer's The humble lipid anchor protein was able to suppress Alzheimer's in these mice, as long as its expression started at the brain development stage Researchers are now studying the effects of the same intervention on the brains of adult mice already suffering from Alzheimer's disease "If you're born with the Alzheimer's gene, you don't have to have memory problems when you're young All this happened a long time later, "parent said "By that time, when your memory is already in trouble, will the increase in the number of mcaids help you? "In fact, the diversity of APP functions has exceeded the expectations of early researchers App triggers a series of events related to memory consolidation, stimulates the growth of new neurons and enhances synaptic activity by participating in complex neural mechanisms At the same time, APP may also produce a β to weaken these memories This "universal protein" has many functions and occasionally contradicts each other Nevertheless, parent hopes that it can become a coveted memory molecule, because it has the ability to form and eliminate memory Reference: Carole deyts et al App mediated signaling precautions memory decision in Alzheimer's release mouse model, cell reports (2019) Doi: 10.1016/j.cellep.2019.03.087