Levitan D, Doyle TG, Brousseau D, Lee MK, Thinakaran G, Slunt HH, Sisodia SS, Greenwald I.
Assessment of normal and mutant human presenilin function in Caenorhabditis elegans.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.
1996 Dec;10(93):14940-4.
ABSTRACT
We provide evidence that normal human presenilins can substitute for Caenorhabditis elegans SEL-12 protein in functional assays in vivo. In addition, six familial Alzheimer's disease-linked mutant human presenilins were tested and found to have reduced ability to rescue the sel-12 mutant phenotype, suggesting that they have lower than normal presenilin activity. A human presenilin 1 deletion variant that fails to be proteolytically processed and a mutant SEL-12 protein that lacks the C terminus display considerable activity in this assay, suggesting that neither presenilin proteolysis nor the C terminus is absolutely required for normal presenilin function. We also show that sel-12 is expressed in most neural and nonneural cell types in all developmental stages. The reduced activity of mutant presenilins and as yet unknown gain-of-function properties may be a contributing factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease.
