A defining pathophysiological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the amyloid plaque; an extracellular deposit of aggregated fibrillar Aβ1-42 peptides. Amyloid plaques are hard, brittle structures scattered throughout the hippocampus and cerebral cortex and are thought to cause hyperphosphorylation of tau, neurofibrillary tangles, and progressive neurodegeneration. Reactive astrocytes and microglia envelop the exterior of amyloid plaques and infiltrate their inner core. Glia are highly mechanosensitive cells and can almost certainly sense the mismatch between the normally soft mechanical environment of the brain and very stiff amyloid plaques via mechanosensing ion channels. Piezo1, a non-selective cation channel, can translate extracellular mechanical forces to intracellular molecular signaling cascades through a process known as mechanotransduction. Here, we utilized an aging transgenic rat model of AD (TgF344-AD) to study expression of mechanosensing Piezo1 ion channels in amyloid plaque-reactive astrocytes. We found that Piezo1 is upregulated with age in the hippocampus and cortex of 18-month old wild-type rats. However, more striking increases in Piezo1 were measured in the hippocampus of TgF344-AD rats compared to age-matched wild-type controls. Interestingly, repeated urinary tract infections with Escherichia coli bacteria, a common comorbidity in elderly people with dementia, caused further elevations in Piezo1 channel expression in the hippocampus and cortex of TgF344-AD rats. Taken together, we report that aging and peripheral infection augment amyloid plaque-induced upregulation of mechanoresponsive ion channels, such as Piezo1, in astrocytes. Further research is required to investigate the role of astrocytic Piezo1 in the Alzheimer's brain, whether modulating channel opening will protect or exacerbate the disease state, and most importantly, if Piezo1 could prove to be a novel drug target for age-related dementia.
Pubmed ID: 30405400 RIS Download
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Collection of data of protein sequence and functional information. Resource for protein sequence and annotation data. Consortium for preservation of the UniProt databases: UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB), UniProt Reference Clusters (UniRef), and UniProt Archive (UniParc), UniProt Proteomes. Collaboration between European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and Protein Information Resource. Swiss-Prot is a curated subset of UniProtKB.
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View all literature mentionsStatistical analysis software that combines scientific graphing, comprehensive curve fitting (nonlinear regression), understandable statistics, and data organization. Designed for biological research applications in pharmacology, physiology, and other biological fields for data analysis, hypothesis testing, and modeling.
View all literature mentionsThis monoclonal targets FAM38A (N-15)
View all literature mentionsThis polyclonal targets FAM38A antibody
View all literature mentionsThis monoclonal targets FAM38A (N-15)
View all literature mentionsThis unknown targets The initial immunization was performed with a preparation of full length human recombinant GFAP expressed in bacteria and highly purified
View all literature mentionsThis polyclonal secondary targets IgG (H+L)
View all literature mentionsThis polyclonal targets FAM38A antibody
View all literature mentionsThis monoclonal targets FAM38A (N-15)
View all literature mentionsThis unknown targets IgG
View all literature mentionsThis polyclonal targets GFAP - Astrocyte Marker
View all literature mentionsStatistical analysis software that combines scientific graphing, comprehensive curve fitting (nonlinear regression), understandable statistics, and data organization. Designed for biological research applications in pharmacology, physiology, and other biological fields for data analysis, hypothesis testing, and modeling.
View all literature mentionsThis unknown targets Goat IgG, whole molecule
View all literature mentionsStatistical analysis software that combines scientific graphing, comprehensive curve fitting (nonlinear regression), understandable statistics, and data organization. Designed for biological research applications in pharmacology, physiology, and other biological fields for data analysis, hypothesis testing, and modeling.
View all literature mentionsThis polyclonal targets FAM38A antibody
View all literature mentionsThis monoclonal targets FAM38A (N-15)
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