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Authors & Affiliations
Masato Koike, Mutsumi Yokota, Yutaro Yoshimo, Hashimoto Ryota, Soichiro Kakuta, Kei-Ichi Ishikawa, Hideyuki Okano, Wado Akamatsu, Nobutaka Hattori
Abstract
Endoplasmic reticulum-mitochondrial contact sites (ERMCS) play an important role in lipid metabolism, calcium signaling, and autophagy. Disruption of the ERMCS has been reported to be linked to several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, the etiological role of ERMCS in these diseases remains unclear. We have previously established tyrosine hydroxylase reporter (TH-GFP) iPSC lines from a PD patient with a PRKN mutation for correlative light-electron microscopy (CLEM) analysis and live cell imaging in GFP-expressing dopaminergic neurons. We analyzed ERMCS in GFP-expressing PRKN-mutant dopaminergic neurons derived from TH-GFP iPSC lines using CLEM and a proximity ligation assay (PLA). The PLA showed that the ERMCS were significantly reduced in PRKN-mutant patient dopaminergic neurons compared to the control under normal conditions. The reduction of the ERMCS in PRKN-mutant patient dopaminergic neurons was further enhanced by treatment with a mitochondrial uncoupler. In addition, mitochondrial calcium imaging showed that mitochondrial Ca2+ flux was significantly reduced in GFP-expressing PRKN-mutant patient dopaminergic neurons compared to the control. These results suggest a defect in calcium flux from ER to mitochondria is due to the decreased ERMCS in PRKN-mutant patient dopaminergic neurons.