Abstract
The accumulation of β-sheet–rich amyloid fibrils or aggregates is a complex, multistep process that is associated with cellular toxicity in a number of human protein misfolding disorders, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. It involves the formation of various transient and intransient, on- and off-pathway aggregate species, whose structure, size and cellular toxicity are largely unclear. Here we demonstrate redirection of amyloid fibril formation through the action of a small molecule, resulting in off-pathway, highly stable oligomers. The polyphenol (−)-epigallocatechin gallate efficiently inhibits the fibrillogenesis of both α-synuclein and amyloid-β by directly binding to the natively unfolded polypeptides and preventing their conversion into toxic, on-pathway aggregation intermediates. Instead of β-sheet–rich amyloid, the formation of unstructured, nontoxic α-synuclein and amyloid-β oligomers of a new type is promoted, suggesting a generic effect on aggregation pathways in neurodegenerative diseases.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
£139.00 per year
only £11.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Dobson, C.M. Protein folding and misfolding. Nature 426, 884–890 (2003).
Rochet, J.C. & Lansbury, P.T., Jr. Amyloid fibrillogenesis: themes and variations. Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 10, 60–68 (2000).
Taylor, J.P., Hardy, J. & Fischbeck, K.H. Toxic proteins in neurodegenerative disease. Science 296, 1991–1995 (2002).
Sacchettini, J.C. & Kelly, J.W. Therapeutic strategies for human amyloid diseases. Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 1, 267–275 (2002).
Fowler, D.M., Koulov, A.V., Balch, W.E. & Kelly, J.W. Functional amyloid—from bacteria to humans. Trends Biochem. Sci. 32, 217–224 (2007).
Lansbury, P.T. & Lashuel, H.A. A century-old debate on protein aggregation and neurodegeneration enters the clinic. Nature 443, 774–779 (2006).
Frieden, C. Actin and tubulin polymerization: the use of kinetic methods to determine mechanism. Annu. Rev. Biophys. Biophys. Chem. 14, 189–210 (1985).
Collins, S.R., Douglass, A., Vale, R.D. & Weissman, J.S. Mechanism of prion propagation: amyloid growth occurs by monomer addition. PLoS Biol. 2, e321 (2004).
Lomakin, A., Teplow, D.B., Kirschner, D.A. & Benedek, G.B. Kinetic theory of fibrillogenesis of amyloid β-protein. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94, 7942–7947 (1997).
Muchowski, P.J. & Wacker, J.L. Modulation of neurodegeneration by molecular chaperones. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 6, 11–22 (2005).
Gosal, W.S. et al. Competing pathways determine fibril morphology in the self-assembly of β2-microglobulin into amyloid. J. Mol. Biol. 351, 850–864 (2005).
Cerda-Costa, N., Esteras-Chopo, A., Aviles, F.X., Serrano, L. & Villegas, V. Early kinetics of amyloid fibril formation reveals conformational reorganisation of initial aggregates. J. Mol. Biol. 366, 1351–1363 (2007).
Rousseau, F., Schymkowitz, J. & Serrano, L. Protein aggregation and amyloidosis: confusion of the kinds? Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 16, 118–126 (2006).
Yang, D.S., Yip, C.M., Huang, T.H., Chakrabartty, A. & Fraser, P.E. Manipulating the amyloid-β aggregation pathway with chemical chaperones. J. Biol. Chem. 274, 32970–32974 (1999).
Serpell, L.C., Berriman, J., Jakes, R., Goedert, M. & Crowther, R.A. Fiber diffraction of synthetic α-synuclein filaments shows amyloid-like cross-β conformation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97, 4897–4902 (2000).
Pellarin, R. & Caflisch, A. Interpreting the aggregation kinetics of amyloid peptides. J. Mol. Biol. 360, 882–892 (2006).
Cohen, F.E. & Kelly, J.W. Therapeutic approaches to protein-misfolding diseases. Nature 426, 905–909 (2003).
Shorter, J. & Lindquist, S. Destruction or potentiation of different prions catalyzed by similar Hsp104 remodeling activities. Mol. Cell 23, 425–438 (2006).
Muchowski, P.J. et al. Hsp70 and Hsp40 chaperones can inhibit self-assembly of polyglutamine proteins into amyloid-like fibrils. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97, 7841–7846 (2000).
Behrends, C. et al. Chaperonin TRiC promotes the assembly of polyQ expansion proteins into nontoxic oligomers. Mol. Cell 23, 887–897 (2006).
Tam, S., Geller, R., Spiess, C. & Frydman, J. The chaperonin TRiC controls polyglutamine aggregation and toxicity through subunit-specific interactions. Nat. Cell Biol. 8, 1155–1162 (2006).
Kitamura, A. et al. Cytosolic chaperonin prevents polyglutamine toxicity with altering the aggregation state. Nat. Cell Biol. 8, 1163–1170 (2006).
Conway, K.A., Rochet, J.C., Bieganski, R.M. & Lansbury, P.T., Jr. Kinetic stabilization of the α-synuclein protofibril by a dopamine-α-synuclein adduct. Science 294, 1346–1349 (2001).
Williams, A.D. et al. Structural properties of Aβ protofibrils stabilized by a small molecule. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102, 7115–7120 (2005).
Necula, M. et al. Methylene blue inhibits amyloid Aβ oligomerization by promoting fibrillization. Biochemistry 46, 8850–8860 (2007).
Ehrnhoefer, D.E. et al. Green tea (−)-epigallocatechin-gallate modulates early events in huntingtin misfolding and reduces toxicity in Huntington's disease models. Hum. Mol. Genet. 15, 2743–2751 (2006).
Masuda, M. et al. Small molecule inhibitors of α-synuclein filament assembly. Biochemistry 45, 6085–6094 (2006).
LeVine, H., III. Quantification of β-sheet amyloid fibril structures with thioflavin T. Methods Enzymol. 309, 274–284 (1999).
Wood, S.J. et al. α-synuclein fibrillogenesis is nucleation-dependent. Implications for the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. J. Biol. Chem. 274, 19509–19512 (1999).
Bosco, D.A. et al. Elevated levels of oxidized cholesterol metabolites in Lewy body disease brains accelerate α-synuclein fibrilization. Nat. Chem. Biol. 2, 249–253 (2006).
Weinreb, P.H., Zhen, W., Poon, A.W., Conway, K.A. & Lansbury, P.T., Jr. NACP, a protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease and learning, is natively unfolded. Biochemistry 35, 13709–13715 (1996).
Paz, M.A., Fluckiger, R., Boak, A., Kagan, H.M. & Gallop, P.M. Specific detection of quinoproteins by redox-cycling staining. J. Biol. Chem. 266, 689–692 (1991).
Craik, D.J. & Wilce, J.A. Studies of protein-ligand interactions by NMR. Methods Mol. Biol. 60, 195–232 (1997).
Bertoncini, C.W., Fernandez, C.O., Griesinger, C., Jovin, T.M. & Zweckstetter, M. Familial mutants of α-synuclein with increased neurotoxicity have a destabilized conformation. J. Biol. Chem. 280, 30649–30652 (2005).
Harper, J.D. & Lansbury, P.T. Models of amyloid seeding in Alzheimer's disease and scrapie: mechanistic truths and physiological consequences of the time-dependent solubility of amyloid proteins. Annu. Rev. Biochem. 66, 385–407 (1997).
Kayed, R. et al. Common structure of soluble amyloid oligomers implies common mechanism of pathogenesis. Science 300, 486–489 (2003).
Bucciantini, M. et al. Inherent toxicity of aggregates implies a common mechanism for protein misfolding diseases. Nature 416, 507–511 (2002).
El-Agnaf, O.M. et al. Aggregates from mutant and wild-type α-synuclein proteins and NAC peptide induce apoptotic cell death in human neuroblastoma cells by formation of β-sheet and amyloid-like filaments. FEBS Lett. 440, 71–75 (1998).
Goedert, M. & Spillantini, M.G. A century of Alzheimer's disease. Science 314, 777–781 (2006).
Bieschke, J., Zhang, Q., Powers, E.T., Lerner, R.A. & Kelly, J.W. Oxidative metabolites accelerate Alzheimer's amyloidogenesis by a two-step mechanism, eliminating the requirement for nucleation. Biochemistry 44, 4977–4983 (2005).
Walsh, D.M. et al. Amyloid β-protein fibrillogenesis. Structure and biological activity of protofibrillar intermediates. J. Biol. Chem. 274, 25945–25952 (1999).
Bennett, M.C. The role of α-synuclein in neurodegenerative diseases. Pharmacol. Ther. 105, 311–331 (2005).
Moore, D.J., West, A.B., Dawson, V.L. & Dawson, T.M. Molecular pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 28, 57–87 (2005).
Iwai, A. et al. The precursor protein of non-Aβ component of Alzheimer's disease amyloid is a presynaptic protein of the central nervous system. Neuron 14, 467–475 (1995).
Fernandez, C.O. et al. NMR of α-synuclein-polyamine complexes elucidates the mechanism and kinetics of induced aggregation. EMBO J. 23, 2039–2046 (2004).
Porat, Y., Abramowitz, A. & Gazit, E. Inhibition of amyloid fibril formation by polyphenols: structural similarity and aromatic interactions as a common inhibition mechanism. Chem. Biol. Drug Des. 67, 27–37 (2006).
Del Mar, C., Greenbaum, E.A., Mayne, L., Englander, S.W. & Woods, V.L., Jr. Structure and properties of α-synuclein and other amyloids determined at the amino acid level. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102, 15477–15482 (2005).
Bieschke, J., Siegel, S.J., Fu, Y. & Kelly, J.W. Alzheimer's Aβ peptides containing an isostructural backbone mutation afford distinct aggregate morphologies but analogous cytotoxicity. Evidence for a common low-abundance toxic structure(s)? Biochemistry 47, 50–59 (2008).
Tompa, P. Intrinsically unstructured proteins. Trends Biochem. Sci. 27, 527–533 (2002).
Mandel, S.A. et al. Multifunctional activities of green tea catechins in neuroprotection. Modulation of cell survival genes, iron-dependent oxidative stress and PKC signaling pathway. Neurosignals 14, 46–60 (2005).
Khan, N., Afaq, F., Saleem, M., Ahmad, N. & Mukhtar, H. Targeting multiple signaling pathways by green tea polyphenol (−)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate. Cancer Res. 66, 2500–2505 (2006).
Kocisko, D.A. et al. New inhibitors of scrapie-associated prion protein formation in a library of 2000 drugs and natural products. J. Virol. 77, 10288–10294 (2003).
Zhu, N. et al. Identification of oxidation products of (−)-epigallocatechin gallate and (−)-epigallocatechin with H2O2 . J. Agric. Food Chem. 48, 979–981 (2000).
Dedmon, M.M., Lindorff-Larsen, K., Christodoulou, J., Vendruscolo, M. & Dobson, C.M. Mapping long-range interactions in α-synuclein using spin-label NMR and ensemble molecular dynamics simulations. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 476–477 (2005).
Eliezer, D., Kutluay, E., Bussell, R. Jr. & Browne, G. Conformational properties of α-synuclein in its free and lipid-associated states. J. Mol. Biol. 307, 1061–1073 (2001).
Acknowledgements
We thank S. Rautenberg, G. Grelle, S. Kostka, S. Plassmann and N. Schugardt for technical assistance, E. Müller and A. Otto for MS, J. Russ for kinetic experiments, S. Engelender for providing αS cDNA, S. Schnoegl for critical reading of the manuscript and editorial support, C. Haenig for computer support, and the department of M. Bienert, Leibnitz-Institute for Molecular Pharmacology, for the use of their CD spectrometer. A.P. and L.M. thank J. Christodoulou for the α-synuclein plasmid and for the spectral assignment in an electronic form. The project was funded by the NGFN2 program of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, to E.E.W.), APOPIS (to E.E.W. and M.H.) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (to D.E.E., E.E.W., A.B., M.H. and S.E.).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
D.E.E. performed αS and Aβ experiments and edited the manuscript; J.B. performed αS and Aβ experiments and edited the manuscript; A.B. and M.H. performed Aβ experiments; L.M. performed NMR experiments; R.L. performed EM experiments; S.E. and A.P. edited the manuscript; E.E.W. designed the study and wrote the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Supplementary information
Supplementary Text and Figures
Supplementary Figures 1–7 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 7646 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ehrnhoefer, D., Bieschke, J., Boeddrich, A. et al. EGCG redirects amyloidogenic polypeptides into unstructured, off-pathway oligomers. Nat Struct Mol Biol 15, 558–566 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.1437
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.1437
This article is cited by
-
Multiple system atrophy: an update and emerging directions of biomarkers and clinical trials
Journal of Neurology (2024)
-
C3N nanodots inhibits Aβ peptides aggregation pathogenic path in Alzheimer’s disease
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Effectiveness of epigallocatechin gallate nanoparticles on the in-vivo treatment of Alzheimer’s disease in a rat/mouse model: a systematic review
DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (2023)
-
Effects and mechanism of small molecule additives on recombinant protein in CHO cells
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (2023)
-
Synthesis, structural characterization and study of antioxidant and anti-PrPSc properties of flavonoids and their rhenium(I)–tricarbonyl complexes
JBIC Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (2023)