Single-molecule imaging of Tau reveals how phosphorylation affects its movement and confinement in living cells

Abstract

Tau is a microtubule-associated protein that is regulated by post-translational modifications. The most studied of these modifications is phosphorylation, which affects Tau’s aggregation and loss- and gain-of-functions, including the interaction with microtubules, in Alzheimer’s disease and primary tauopathies. However, little is known about how Tau’s phosphorylation state affects its dynamics and organisation at the single-molecule level. Here, using quantitative single-molecule localisation microscopy, we examined how mimicking or abrogating phosphorylation at 14 disease-associated serine and threonine residues through mutagenesis influences the behaviour of Tau in live Neuro-2a cells. We observed that both pseudohyperphosphorylated Tau (TauE14) and phosphorylation-deficient Tau (TauA14) exhibit a heterogeneous mobility pattern near the plasma membrane. Notably, we found that the mobility of TauE14 molecules was higher than wild-type Tau molecules, while TauA14 molecules displayed lower mobility. Moreover, TauA14 was organised in a filament-like structure resembling cytoskeletal filaments, within which TauA14 exhibited spatial and kinetic heterogeneity. Our study provides a direct visualisation of how the phosphorylation state of Tau affects its spatial and temporal organisation, presumably reflecting the phosphorylation-dependent changes in the interactions between Tau and its partners. We suggest that alterations in Tau dynamics resulting from aberrant changes in phosphorylation could be a critical step in its pathological dysregulation.