2D polarization imaging as a low-cost fluorescence method to detect α-synuclein aggregation ex vivo in models of Parkinson’s disease

Rafael Camacho, Daniela Täuber, Christian Hansen, Juanzi Shi, Luc Bousset, Ronald Melki, Jia-Yi Li, Ivan Scheblykin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A hallmark of Parkinson’s disease is the formation of large protein-rich aggregates in neurons, where α-synuclein is the most abundant protein. A standard approach to visualize aggregation is to fluorescently label the proteins of interest. Then, highly fluorescent regions are assumed to contain aggregated proteins. However, fluorescence brightness alone cannot discriminate micrometer-sized regions with high expression of non-aggregated proteins from regions where the proteins are aggregated on the molecular scale. Here, we demonstrate that 2-dimensional polarization imaging can discriminate between preformed non-aggregated and aggregated forms of α-synuclein, and detect increased aggregation in brain tissues of transgenic mice. This imaging method assesses homo-FRET between labels by measuring fluorescence polarization in excitation and emission simultaneously, which translates into higher contrast than fluorescence anisotropy imaging. Exploring earlier aggregation states of α-synuclein using such technically simple imaging method could lead to crucial improvements in our understanding of α-synuclein-mediated pathology in Parkinson’s Disease.
Original languageEnglish
Article number157
JournalCommunications Biology
Volume1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Biophysics
  • Medical Biotechnology
  • Biological Sciences
  • Clinical Laboratory Medicine

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of '2D polarization imaging as a low-cost fluorescence method to detect α-synuclein aggregation ex vivo in models of Parkinson’s disease'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this