Affiliations: [a] Normandie Univ, UNIROUEN, Inserm U1245 and Rouen University Hospital, Department of Genetics and CNR-MAJ, Normandy Center for Genomic and Personalized Medicine, Rouen, France
| [b] Centre Hospitalier du Rouvray, Sotteville-Lès-Rouen, France
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Magalie Lecourtois, Inserm U1245, Faculty of Medicine, 22 Boulevard Gambetta, 76183 Rouen Cedex, France. Tel.: +33 2 3514 8304; E-mail: magalie.lecourtois@univ-rouen.fr.
Abstract: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is neuropathologically defined by two key hallmarks: extracellular senile plaques composed primarily of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide and intraneuronal neurofibrillary tangles, containing abnormally hyperphosphorylated tau protein. The tau protein is encoded by the MAPT gene. Recently, the H1 and H2 haplotypes of the MAPT gene were associated with AD risk. The minor MAPT H2 haplotype has been linked with a decreased risk of developing late-onset AD (LOAD). MAPT haplotypes show different levels of MAPT/Tau expression with H1 being ∼1.5-fold more expressed than H2, suggesting that MAPT expression level could be related to LOAD risk. In this study, we investigated whether this moderate difference in MAPT/Tau expression could influence Aβ-induced toxicity in vivo. We show that modest overexpression of tau protein in Drosophila exacerbates neuronal phenotypes in AβPP/BACE1 flies. The exacerbation of neuronal defects correlates with the accumulation of insoluble dTau oligomers, suggesting that the moderate difference in level of tau expression observed between H1 and H2 haplotypes could influence Aβ toxicity through the production of oligomeric tau insoluble species.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid-β peptide, Drosophila
, oligomers, tau
