Dysregulation in the Brain Protein Profile of Zebrafish Lacking the Parkinson ’s Disease-Related Protein DJ-1

AbstractDJ-1 is a protein with a wide range of functions importantly related to redox regulation in the cell. In humans, dysfunction of thePARK7 gene is associated with neurodegeneration and Parkinson ’s disease. Our objective was to establish a novel DJ-1 knockout zebrafish line and to identify early brain proteome changes, which could be linked to later pathology. The CRISPR-Cas9 method was used to target exon 1 of thepark7-/- gene to produce a transgenic DJ-1-deficient zebrafish model of Parkinson ’s disease. Label-free mass spectrometry was employed to identify altered protein expression in the DJ-1 null brain of early adult animals. Thepark7−/− line appears to develop normally at young adult and larval stages. With aging however, DJ-1 null fish exhibit lower tyrosine hydroxylase levels, respiratory failure in skeletal muscle, and lower body mass which is especially prevalent among male fish. By proteomic analysis of early adult brains, we determined that less than 5% of the 4091 identified proteins were influenced by the lack of DJ-1. The dysregulated proteins were mainly proteins known to be involved in mitochondrial metabolism, mitophagy, stress response, redox regulation, and inflammation. This dysregulation in protein networks of our novel DJ-1-deficient zebrafish model occurs in the early adult stage preceding a Parkinson ’s disease-related phenotype and the reduction of tyrosine hydroxylase level. The identified protein changes provide new mechanistic bac...
Source: Molecular Neurobiology - Category: Neurology Source Type: research