BioProject

FUS ALS seems to preferentially affect sMNs, and cognitive dysfunction in FUS ALS is rare. More...

FUS ALS seems to preferentially affect sMNs, and cognitive dysfunction in FUS ALS is rare. Considering this, we wanted to analyze if cortical neurons behave differently than spinal motor neurons in response to FUS mutations. For this, we used cortical neurons derived from isogenic human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) in which either WT or NLS mutant FUS P525L was tagged with eGFP using CRISPR/Cas9 and systematically compared them to sMNs of the identical iPSCs. Phenotypically, mutant FUS cortical neurons showed less impairment of FUS recruitment to DNA damage sites compared to mutant sMNs and less signs of DNA damage, which were similarly found in post mortem tissue. To advance our understanding of finding different molecular mechanisms and pathways related to FUS mutations in ALS disease, we have performed RNA sequencing of FUS ALS cortical and spinal motor neurons and our results revealed basic differences in their transcriptomes. Alternative splicing events in spinal motor neurons were different from cortical neurons also pointing towards DNA damage in FUS ALS. Overall design: Patient-derived isogenic spinal motoneurons (MN) or cortical neurons (CN) expressing either normal (FUS WT) or mutant P525L FUS-eGFP (FUS P525L) were matured for 21 DIV. The main cell model used in this study were neurons derived from FUS-WT-EGFP and FUS-P525L-EGFP that were generated as a part of previous study (Naumann, Pal et al. 2018). Briefly, fibroblasts carrying R521C FUS mutation obtained from a 58-year-old female were reprogrammed into iPSC using cDNA of OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 and cMYC delivered via retroviral vectors. Next, CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing was used to i) correct the R521C mutation into WT FUS and to tag it with EGFP to generate the FUS WT EGFP line or ii) replace the R521C mutation into P525L FUS mutation and to tag it with EGFP to generate FUS P525L EGFP line. Differentiation of hiPSC into spinal motor neurons (MNs) was carried out based on the protocol from Reinhardt et al. 2013. Differentiation of hiPSC into cortical neurons (CN) was based on the protocol published by Burkhardt et al.(Burkhardt, Martinez et al. 2013, Japtok, Lojewski et al. 2015). Less...