Direct Tracking of Amyloid and Tu Dynamics in Neuroblastoma Cells Using Nanoplasmonic Fiber Tip Probes.

Abstract

Amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. However, there has been a long-standing discussion on the dynamic relations between Aβ and tau proteins, partially due to the lack of a tool to track protein dynamics in individual live neurons at the early stage of Aβ generation and tau phosphorylation. Here, we developed nanoplasmonic fiber tip probe (nFTP) technology to simultaneously monitor Aβ42 generation and tau phosphorylation (at serine 262) in living, single neuroblastoma cells over 12 h. We observed that Aβ42 generation, under clinically relevant anesthetic treatment, preceded tau phosphorylation, which then facilitated Aβ42 generation. This observation is also supported by measuring proteins in cell lysates using the ultrasensitive label-free photonic crystal nanosensors. nFTP therefore provides an advanced method to investigate protein expression and post-translational modification in live cells and determine outcomes of intervention of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

• Authors: Feng Liang, Yiying Zhang, Wooyoung Hong, Yuanlin Dong, Zhongcong Xie, Qimin Quan
• Journal: Nano letters (Nano Lett) Vol. 16 Issue 7 Pg. 3989-94 (07 13 2016) ISSN: 1530-6992 [Electronic] United States
• PMID: 27266855 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)

Chemical References

• Amyloid beta-Peptides
• tau Proteins

Topics

• Alzheimer Disease
• Amyloid beta-Peptides (chemistry)
• Cell Line, Tumor
• Humans
• Nanotechnology
• Neuroblastoma (chemistry)
• Phosphorylation
• tau Proteins (chemistry)