Aggregated Tau protein is associated with over 20 neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease. Previous work has shown that Tau's sequence segments VQIINK (SEQ ID NO: 11) and VQIVYK (SEQ ID NO: 9) drive its aggregation, and that inhibitors based on the structure of the VQIVYK (SEQ ID NO: 9) segment partially inhibit Tau aggregation. Here we show that the VQIINK (SEQ ID NO: 11) segment is the more powerful driver of Tau aggregation. Two structures of this segment determined by the cryo EM method MicroED explain its more powerful seeding. Of practical significance, the understanding of the structures has led to the design of structure based peptide inhibitors that effectively inhibit Tau aggregation as well as the ability of exogenous Tau fibrils to seed intracellular Tau in mammalian cells into amyloid.
Tau 蛋白的聚集与包括阿尔茨海默病在内的 20 多种神经系统疾病有关。以前的研究表明,Tau 的序列片段 VQIINK(
SEQ ID NO: 11)和 VQIVYK(
SEQ ID NO: 9)驱动其聚集,基于 VQIVYK(
SEQ ID NO: 9)片段结构的
抑制剂可部分抑制 Tau 的聚集。在这里,我们证明 VQIINK(
SEQ ID NO: 11)区段是 Tau 聚集的更强大驱动力。通过低温电磁方法 MicroED 确定的该片段的两种结构解释了其更强大的播种作用。具有实际意义的是,通过对这些结构的了解,我们设计出了基于结构的
多肽抑制剂,它们能有效抑制 Tau 的聚集以及外源 Tau 纤维在哺乳动物细胞中将细胞内 Tau 种子转化为淀粉样蛋白的能力。