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Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), like many other neurodegenerative diseases, is highly heritable, but with only a small fraction of cases explained by monogenic disease alleles. To better understand sporadic ALS, we report epigenomic profiles, as measured by ATAC-seq, of motor neuron cultures derived from a diverse group of 380 ALS patients and 80 healthy controls. We find that chromatin accessibility is heavily influenced by sex, the iPSC cell type of origin, ancestry, and the inherent variance arising from sequencing. Once these covariates are corrected for, we are able to identify ALS-specific signals in the data. Additionally, we find that the ATAC-seq data is able to predict ALS disease progression rates with similar accuracy to methods based on biomarkers and clinical status. These results suggest that iPSC-derived motor neurons recapitulate important disease-relevant epigenomic changes., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Cell death is a critical process that occurs normally in health and disease. However, its study is limited due to available technologies that only detect very late stages in the process or specific death mechanisms. Here, we report the development of a family of fluorescent biosensors called genetically encoded death indicators (GEDIs). GEDIs specifically detect an intracellular Ca 2+ level that cells achieve early in the cell death process and that marks a stage at which cells are irreversibly committed to die. The time-resolved nature of a GEDI delineates a binary demarcation of cell life and death in real time, reformulating the definition of cell death. We demonstrate that GEDIs acutely and accurately report death of rodent and human neurons in vitro, and show that GEDIs enable an automated imaging platform for single cell detection of neuronal death in vivo in zebrafish larvae. With a quantitative pseudo-ratiometric signal, GEDIs facilitate high-throughput analysis of cell death in time-lapse imaging analysis, providing the necessary resolution and scale to identify early factors leading to cell death in studies of neurodegeneration., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The original version of this Article incorrectly gave a publication date of 8 October 2018; this should have been 28 September 2018. This has now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.

Huntington's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by polyglutamine-expanded mutant huntingtin (mHTT). Here, we show that the deubiquitinase Usp12 rescues mHTT-mediated neurodegeneration in Huntington's disease rodent and patient-derived human neurons, and in Drosophila. The neuroprotective role of Usp12 may be specific amongst related deubiquitinases, as the closely related homolog Usp46 does not suppress mHTT-mediated toxicity. Mechanistically, we identify Usp12 as a potent inducer of neuronal autophagy. Usp12 overexpression accelerates autophagic flux and induces an approximately sixfold increase in autophagic structures as determined by ultrastructural analyses, while suppression of endogenous Usp12 slows autophagy. Surprisingly, the catalytic activity of Usp12 is not required to protect against neurodegeneration or induce autophagy. These findings identify the deubiquitinase Usp12 as a regulator of neuronal proteostasis and mHTT-mediated neurodegeneration.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) have distinct clinical features but a common pathology--cytoplasmic inclusions rich in transactive response element DNA-binding protein of 43 kDa (TDP43). Rare TDP43 mutations cause ALS or FTD, but abnormal TDP43 levels and localization may cause disease even if TDP43 lacks a mutation. Here we show that individual neurons vary in their ability to clear TDP43 and are exquisitely sensitive to TDP43 levels. To measure TDP43 clearance, we developed and validated a single-cell optical method that overcomes the confounding effects of aggregation and toxicity and discovered that pathogenic mutations shorten TDP43 half-life. New compounds that stimulate autophagy improved TDP43 clearance and localization and enhanced survival in primary murine neurons and in human stem cell-derived neurons and astrocytes harboring mutant TDP43. These findings indicate that the levels and localization of TDP43 critically determine neurotoxicity and show that autophagy induction mitigates neurodegeneration by acting directly on TDP43 clearance.

In polyglutamine (polyQ) diseases, only certain neurons die, despite widespread expression of the offending protein. PolyQ expansion may induce neurodegeneration by impairing proteostasis, but protein aggregation and toxicity tend to confound conventional measurements of protein stability. Here, we used optical pulse labeling to measure effects of polyQ expansions on the mean lifetime of a fragment of huntingtin, the protein that causes Huntington's disease, in living neurons. We show that polyQ expansion reduced the mean lifetime of mutant huntingtin within a given neuron and that the mean lifetime varied among neurons, indicating differences in their capacity to clear the polypeptide. We found that neuronal longevity is predicted by the mean lifetime of huntingtin, as cortical neurons cleared mutant huntingtin faster and lived longer than striatal neurons. Thus, cell type-specific differences in turnover capacity may contribute to cellular susceptibility to toxic proteins, and efforts to bolster proteostasis in Huntington's disease, such as protein clearance, could be neuroprotective.

Objective: Although there are established age-related differences in sweet preferences, it remains unknown whether children differ from mothers in their preference for and perception of fat (creaminess). We examined whether individual differences in sucrose and fat preferences and perception are related to age, genotype and lifestyle., Subjects: Children 5-10 years-old (n=84) and their mothers (n=67) chose the concentration of sucrose and fat most preferred in pudding and sucrose most preferred in water using identical, two-alternative, forced-choice procedures, and ranked pudding samples for intensity of sweetness and creaminess. Subjects were also weighed and measured for height, as well as genotyped for a sweet-receptor gene (TAS1R3)., Results: Children preferred higher concentrations of sucrose in water (P=0.03) and in pudding (P=0.05) and lower concentrations of fat in pudding (P<0.01) than did mothers. Children and mothers were equally able to rank the intensity of different concentrations of fat (P=0.12) but not sucrose in pudding (P=0.01). Obese and lean children and mothers did not differ in preferences, but obese mothers were less able to correctly rank the concentration of fat in pudding than were lean mothers (P=0.03). Mothers who smoked preferred a higher concentration of sucrose than did those who never smoked (P<0.01). Individual differences in sweet preference were associated with genetic variation within the TAS1R3 gene in mothers but not children (P=0.04)., Conclusion: Irrespective of genotype, children prefer higher concentrations of sugar but lower concentrations of fat in puddings than do their mothers. Thus, reduced-fat foods may be better accepted by children than adults.

Polyglutamine (polyQ) stretches exceeding a threshold length confer a toxic function to proteins that contain them and cause at least nine neurological disorders. The basis for this toxicity threshold is unclear. Although polyQ expansions render proteins prone to aggregate into inclusion bodies, this may be a neuronal coping response to more toxic forms of polyQ. The exact structure of these more toxic forms is unknown. Here we show that the monoclonal antibody 3B5H10 recognizes a species of polyQ protein in situ that strongly predicts neuronal death. The epitope selectively appears among some of the many low-molecular-weight conformational states assumed by expanded polyQ and disappears in higher-molecular-weight aggregated forms, such as inclusion bodies. These results suggest that protein monomers and possibly small oligomers containing expanded polyQ stretches can adopt a conformation that is recognized by 3B5H10 and is toxic or closely related to a toxic species.