@article{8a23a80d34b6476d950c69f176de00b5,
title = "2D polarization imaging as a low-cost fluorescence method to detect α-synuclein aggregation ex vivo in models of Parkinson{\textquoteright}s disease",
abstract = "A hallmark of Parkinson{\textquoteright}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{\textquoteright}s Disease.",
author = "Rafael Camacho and Daniela T{\"a}uber and Christian Hansen and Juanzi Shi and Luc Bousset and Ronald Melki and Jia-Yi Li and Ivan Scheblykin",
year = "2018",
doi = "10.1038/s42003-018-0156-x",
language = "English",
volume = "1",
journal = "Communications Biology",
issn = "2399-3642",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
}