Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a common neurodegenerative disease that affects over 5 million Americans. The disease is commonly characterized by the formation of senile plaques of the amyloid beta (Aβ) and neurofibrillary tangles. These usually develop in the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, and temporal lobe and they can impair the patient’s memory, thinking, language, planning, and behavior. The symptoms of AD generally develop slowly and worsen over time until they become severe enough to affect everyday tasks. There is no known cause or cure for AD but there are many hypotheses referring to the development of AD. Due to no cure being available treatment has been restricted to alleviating symptoms for AD. One of the newer approaches focuses on mitochondrial dysfunction. This is when the mitochondria release reactive oxidative species (ROS). The ROS cause damage and changes in expression of tissues, proteins, and genes. MitoNEET is a newly discovered mitochondrial protein that is thought to regulate bioenergetics in cells. The key focus of our research is to help resolve the mechanism of AD by identifying potential targets for treatment that could lead to a cure. We will assess changes in protein expression when exposed to current AD therapeutics using fluorescence microscopy. Fluorescence microscopy is used to evaluate changes in protein trafficking and expression upon exposure to treatments. One such treatment is isoproterenol, which is bronchodilator that has been shown to upregulate mitoNEET. Our preliminary studies use fluorescence microscopy to verify that isoproterenol upregulated the expression of mitoNEET. Mouse neuroblastoma cells, N2a cells, were transiently transfected for 24 hours with a mitoNEET-GFP plasmid at a concentration of 150 ng/uL. Then the N2a cells were exposed to isoproterenol for 24 hours and imaged using fluorescence microscopy. The results showed a two-fold increase in the relative integrated density when exposed to 1, 10, 100 uM of isoproterenol. Further studies will investigate the mitoNEET regulation in response to drugs used to treat AD.

Analysis of Alzheimer’s Disease therapeutics effect on mitoNEET expression using fluorescence microscopy

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.