Glycosylation is one of the most common, and the most complex, forms of post-translational modification of proteins. This review serves to highlight the role of protein glycosylation in Alzheimer disease (AD), a topic that has not been thoroughly investigated, although glycosylation defects have been observed in AD patients. The major pathological hallmarks in AD are neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques. Neurofibrillary tangles are composed of phosphorylated tau, and the plaques are composed of amyloid b-peptide (Ab), which is generated from amyloid precursor protein (APP). Defects in glycosylation of APP, tau and other proteins have been reported in AD. Another interesting observation is that the two proteases required for the generation of amyloid b-peptide (Ab), i.e. c-secretase and b-secretase, also have roles in protein glycosylation. For instance, c-secretase and b-secretase affect the extent of complex N-glycosylation and sialylation of APP, respectively. These processes may be important in AD pathogenesis, as proper intracellular sorting, processing and export of APP are affected by how it is glycosylated. Furthermore, lack of one of the key components of c-secretase, presenilin, leads to defective glycosylation of many additional proteins that are related to AD pathogenesis and/or neuronal function, including nicastrin, reelin, butyrylcholinesterase, cholinesterase, neural cell adhesion molecule, v-ATPase, and tyrosine-related kinase B. Improved understanding of the effects of AD on protein glycosylation, and vice versa, may therefore be important for improving the diagnosis and treatment of AD patients.

Serpin family protein proteinase inhibitors regulate the activity of serine and cysteine proteinases by a novel conformational trapping mechanism that may itself be regulated by cofactors to provide a finely-tuned time and location-dependent control of proteinase activity. The serpin, antithrombin, together with its cofactors, heparin and heparan sulfate, perform a critical anticoagulant function by preventing the activation of blood clotting proteinases except when needed at the site of a vascular injury. Here, we review the detailed molecular understanding of this regulatory mechanism that has emerged from numerous X-ray crystal structures of antithrombin and its complexes with heparin and target proteinases together with mutagenesis and functional studies of heparin-antithrombinproteinase interactions in solution. Like other serpins, antithrombin achieves specificity for its target blood clotting proteinases by presenting recognition determinants in an exposed reactive center loop as well as in exosites outside the loop. Antithrombin reactivity is repressed in the absence of its activator because of unfavorable interactions that diminish the favorable RCL and exosite interactions with proteinases. Binding of a specific heparin or heparan sulfate pentasaccharide to antithrombin induces allosteric activating changes that mitigate the unfavorable interactions and promote template bridging of the serpin and proteinase. Antithrombin has thus evolved a sophisticated means of regulating the activity of blood clotting proteinases in a time and locationdependent manner that exploits the multiple conformational states of the serpin and their differential stabilization by glycosaminoglycan cofactors.

BackgroundIncreased levels of the pathogenic amyloid β-peptide (Aβ), released from its precursor by the transmembrane protease γ-secretase, are found in Alzheimer disease (AD) brains. Interestingly, monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B) activity is also increased in AD brain, but its role in AD pathogenesis is not known. Recent neuroimaging studies have shown that the increased MAO-B expression in AD brain starts several years before the onset of the disease. Here, we show a potential connection between MAO-B, γ-secretase and Aβ in neurons.MethodsMAO-B immunohistochemistry was performed on postmortem human brain. Affinity purification of γ-secretase followed by mass spectrometry was used for unbiased identification of γ-secretase-associated proteins. The association of MAO-B with γ-secretase was studied by coimmunoprecipitation from brain homogenate, and by in-situ proximity ligation assay (PLA) in neurons as well as mouse and human brain sections. The effect of MAO-B on Aβ production and Notch processing in cell cultures was analyzed by siRNA silencing or overexpression experiments followed by ELISA, western blot or FRET analysis. Methodology for measuring relative intraneuronal MAO-B and Aβ42 levels in single cells was developed by combining immunocytochemistry and confocal microscopy with quantitative image analysis.ResultsImmunohistochemistry revealed MAO-B staining in neurons in the frontal cortex, hippocampus CA1 and entorhinal cortex in postmortem human brain. Interestingly, the neuronal staining intensity was higher in AD brain than in control brain in these regions. Mass spectrometric data from affinity purified γ-secretase suggested that MAO-B is a γ-secretase-associated protein, which was confirmed by immunoprecipitation and PLA, and a neuronal location of the interaction was shown. Strikingly, intraneuronal Aβ42 levels correlated with MAO-B levels, and siRNA silencing of MAO-B resulted in significantly reduced levels of intraneuronal Aβ42. Furthermore, overexpression of MAO-B enhanced Aβ production.ConclusionsThis study shows that MAO-B levels are increased not only in astrocytes but also in pyramidal neurons in AD brain. The study also suggests that MAO-B regulates Aβ production in neurons via γ-secretase and thereby provides a key to understanding the relationship between MAO-B and AD pathogenesis. Potentially, the γ-secretase/MAO-B association may be a target for reducing Aβ levels using protein–protein interaction breakers.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13195-017-0279-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The anticoagulant sulfated polysaccharide, heparin, binds to the plasma coagulation proteinase inhibitor, antithrombin, and activates it by a conformational change that results in a greatly increased rate of inhibition of target proteinases. Lys125 of antithrombin has previously been implicated in this binding by chemical modification and site-directed mutagenesis and by the crystal structure of a complex between antithrombin and a pentasaccharide constituting the antithrombin-binding region of heparin. Replacement of Lys125 with Met or Gln in this work reduced the affinity of antithrombin for full-length heparin or the pentasaccharide by 150-600-fold at I = 0.15, corresponding to a loss of 25-33% of the total binding energy. The affinity decrease was due both to disruption of approximately three ionic interactions, indicating that Lys125 and two other basic residues of antithrombin act cooperatively in binding to heparin, and to weakened nonionic interactions. The mutations caused a 10-17-fold decrease in the affinity of the initial, weak binding step of the two-step mechanism of heparin binding to antithrombin. They also increased the reverse rate constant of the second, conformational change step by 10-50-fold. Lys125 is thus a major heparin-binding residue of antithrombin, contributing an amount of binding energy comparable to that of Arg129, but less energy than Lys114. It is the first residue identified so far that has a critical role in the initial recognition of heparin by antithrombin, but also appreciably stabilizes the heparin-induced activated state of the inhibitor. These effects are exerted by interactions of Lys125 with the nonreducing end of the heparin pentasaccharide.

Alzheimer disease (AD) is a devastating disease and a global health problem, and current treatments are only symptomatic. A wealth of clinical studies support that the disease starts to develop decades before the first symptoms appear, emphasizing the importance of studying early changes for improving early diagnosis and guiding toward novel treatment strategies. Protein glycosylation is altered in AD but it remains to be clarified why these alterations occur and how they affect the disease development. Here, we used a glycomics approach to search for alterations in protein glycosylation in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in AD compared with nondemented controls. Using both matrix‐assisted laser desorption ionization‐time of flight and liquid chromatography–electrospray mass spectrometry, we observed an increase in N‐glycans carrying bisecting N‐acetylglucosamine in AD. Based on those findings, we designed an enzyme‐linked multiwell plate assay to quantify N‐glycans binding to the lectin Phaseolus vulgaris Erythroagglutinin (PHA‐E), which is specific for N‐glycans containing bisecting N‐acetylglucosamine. Using this assay, we found a similar increase in CSF in AD compared with controls. Further analysis of CSF from 242 patients with subjective cognitive impairment (SCI), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or AD dementia revealed significantly increased binding to PHA‐E in MCI and AD compared to SCI. Interestingly, PHA‐E binding correlated with CSF levels of phosphorylated tau and total tau and this correlation was most prominent in the SCI group ( R = 0.53–0.54). This study supports a link between N‐glycosylation, neurodegeneration, and tau pathology in AD and suggests that glycan biomarkers have potential to identify SCI cases at risk of developing AD.

Super-resolution microscopy reveals that Aβ42 is mainly present at the presynaptic side of the synapse.

The transmembrane protein assembly γ-secretase is a key protease in regulated intramembrane processing (RIP) of around 100 type-1 transmembrane proteins. Importantly, it has a pathological role in Alzheimer disease (AD) as it generates the neurotoxic amyloid β-peptide from the amyloid precursor protein (APP). Studies on γ-secretase location are therefore crucial both from a biological and a therapeutic perspective. Despite several years of efforts in many laboratories, it is not clear where in the neuron γ-secretase exerts it’s activities. Technical challenges include the fact that the active enzyme contains four protein components and that most subcellular compartments cannot be spatially resolved by traditional light microscopy. Here, we have used a powerful combination of the two nanoscopy techniques STORM and STED microscopy to visualize the location of γ-secretase in neurons using an active-site specific probe, with a focus on the synapse. We show that γ-secretase is present in both the pre-and postsynaptic compartments. We further show that the enzyme is enriched very close to the synaptic cleft in the postsynaptic membrane, as well as to NMDA receptors, demonstrating that γ-secretase is present in the postsynaptic plasma membrane. Importantly, the expression of γ-secretase increased in the pre- and postsynaptic compartments with the size of the synapse, suggesting a correlation between γ-secretase activity and synapse maturation. Thus, our data shows the synaptic location with high precision in three dimensions and settles the long-lasting debate on the synaptic location of γ-secretase.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40478-016-0296-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Synaptic degeneration and accumulation of the neurotoxic amyloid b-peptide (Ab) in the brain are hallmarks of Alzheimer disease. Ab is produced by sequential cleavage of the amyloid precursor protein (APP), by the b-secretase b-site APP cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) and c-secretase. However, Ab generation is precluded if APP is cleaved by the a-secretase ADAM10 instead of BACE1. We have previously shown that Ab can be produced locally at the synapse. To study the synaptic localization of the APP processing enzymes we used western blotting to demonstrate that, compared to total brain homogenate, ADAM10 and BACE1 were greatly enriched in synaptic vesicles isolated from rat brain using controlled-pore glass chromatography, whereas Presenilin1 was the only enriched component of the c-secretase complex. Moreover, we detected ADAM10 activity in synaptic vesicles and enrichment of the intermediate APP-C-terminal fragments (APP-CTFs). We confirmed the western blotting findings using in situ proximity ligation assay to demonstrate close proximity of ADAM10 and BACE1 with the synaptic vesicle marker synaptophysin in intact mouse primary hippocampal neurons. In contrast, only sparse co-localization of active c-secretase and synaptophysin was detected. These results indicate that the first step of APP processing occurs in synaptic vesicles whereas the final step is more likely to take place elsewhere.