KTKEGV repeat motifs are key mediators of normal α-synuclein tetramerization: Their mutation causes excess monomers and neurotoxicity

Abstract

α-Synuclein (αS) is a highly abundant neuronal protein that aggregates into β-sheet-rich inclusions in Parkinson's disease (PD). αS was long thought to occur as a natively unfolded monomer, but recent work suggests it also occurs normally in α-helix-rich tetramers and related multimers. To elucidate the fundamental relationship between αS multimers and monomers in living neurons, we performed systematic mutagenesis to abolish self-interactions and learn which structural determinants underlie native multimerization. Unexpectedly, tetramers/multimers still formed in cells expressing each of 14 sequential 10-residue deletions across the 140-residue polypeptide. We postulated compensatory effects among the six highly conserved and one to three additional αS repeat motifs (consensus: KTKEGV), consistent with αS and its homologs β- and ã-synuclein all forming tetramers while sharing only the repeats. Upon inserting in-register missense mutations into six or more αS repeats, certain mutations abolished tetramer formation, shown by intact-cell cross-linking and independently by fluorescentprotein complementation. For example, altered repeat motifs KLKEGV, KTKKGV, KTKEIV, or KTKEGW did not support tetramerization, indicating the importance of charged or small residues. When we expressed numerous different in-register repeat mutants in human neural cells, all multimer-abolishing but no multimer-neutral mutants caused frank neurotoxicity akin to the proapoptotic protein Bax. The multimer-abolishing variants became enriched in bufferinsoluble cell fractions and formed round cytoplasmic inclusions in primary cortical neurons. We conclude that the αS repeat motifs mediate physiological tetramerization, and perturbing them causes PD-like neurotoxicity. Moreover, the mutants we describe are valuable tools for studying normal and pathological properties of αS and screening for tetramer-stabilizing therapeutics.