Biochemical analysis of α-synuclein extracted from control and Parkinson’s disease colonic biopsies

Anne-Gaëlle Corbillé (1, 2) , Cécile Preterre (2) , Malvyne Rolli-Derkinderen (2, 3) , Emmanuel Coron (2, 1) , Michel Neunlist (2) , Thibaud Lebouvier (4) , Pascal Derkinderen (2, 3, 1)

1 CHU Nantes - Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nantes
2 TENS - The Enteric Nervous System in gut and brain disorders [U1235]
3 IMAD - Institut des maladies de l'appareil digestif [Nantes]
4 CMRR - Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherche [Lille-Bailleul]

Lewy bodies and neurites, the pathological hallmarks found in the brain of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, are primarily composed of aggregated and hyperphosphorylated alpha-synuclein. The observation that alpha-synuclein inclusions are also found in the gut of the vast majority of parkinsonian patients has led to an increasing number of studies aimed at developing diagnostic procedures based on the detection of pathological alpha-synuclein in gastrointestinal biopsies. The previous studies, which have all used immunohistochemistry for the detection of alpha-synuclein, have provided conflicting results. In the current survey, we used a different approach by analyzing the immunoreactivity pattern of alpha-synuclein separated by one- and two-dimensional electrophoresis, in colonic biopsies from PD subjects and healthy individuals. We did not observe any differences between controls and PD in the expression levels, phosphorylation or aggregation status of alpha-synuclein. Overall, our study suggests that the two biochemical methods tested here are not adequate for the prediction of PD using gastrointestinal biopsies. Further studies, using other biochemical approaches, are warranted to test whether there exists specific forms of pathological alpha-synuclein that distinguish PD from control subjects.

Mots clés: Alpha-synuclein; Phosphorylation; Western blot; Two-dimensional immunoblot; Gastrointestinal biopsy; Enteric nervous system

Domaines: Neurobiologie

Anne-Gaëlle Corbillé, Cécile Preterre, Malvyne Rolli-Derkinderen, Emmanuel Coron, Michel Neunlist, et al.. Biochemical analysis of α-synuclein extracted from control and Parkinson’s disease colonic biopsies. Neuroscience Letters, 2017, 641, pp.81-86. ⟨10.1016/j.neulet.2017.01.050⟩. ⟨hal-03153604⟩