Med Microbiol Immunol. 2009 Jul 25.
Manganese-induced changes of the biochemical characteristics of the recombinant wild-type and mutant PrPs.
Li XL, Dong CF, Wang GR, Zhou RM, Shi Q, Tian C, Gao C, Mei GY, Chen C, Xu K, Han J, Dong XP.
State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Ying-Xin Rd 100, Beijing, 100052, People's Republic of China.
Manganese may play some roles in the pathogenesis of prion diseases. In this study, recombinant human wild-type (WT) PrP and PrP mutants with deleted or inserted octarepeats were exposed to manganese, and their biochemical and biophysical characteristics were evaluated by proteinase K (PK) digestion, sedimentation experiments, transmission electron microscopy and circular dichroism. It demonstrated that incubation of manganese remarkably increased PK-resistances, protein aggregations and beta-sheet contents of the PrPs. Moreover, the PrP mutants of inserted or deleted octarepeats were much vulnerable to the influence of manganese, which showed obviously more aggregation and higher beta-sheet content than that of WT-PrP. It highlights that the effect of manganese on the PrP seems to lie on the incorrectness of the octarepeats numbers. The association of the octarepeats number of PrP with manganese may further provide insight into the unresolved biological function of PrP in the neurons.
PMID: 19633867