Brain Metabolite, N-Acetylaspartate Is a Potent Protein Aggregation Inhibitor

Marina Warepam; Awdhesh Kumar Mishra; Gurumayum Suraj Sharma; Kritika Kumari; Snigdha Krishna; Mohd Sajjad Ahmad Khan; Hamidur Rahman; Laishram Rajendrakumar Singh

doi:10.3389/fncel.2021.617308

Brain Metabolite, N-Acetylaspartate Is a Potent Protein Aggregation Inhibitor

Front Cell Neurosci. 2021 Feb 5:15:617308. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2021.617308. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Marina Warepam¹, Awdhesh Kumar Mishra², Gurumayum Suraj Sharma³, Kritika Kumari⁴, Snigdha Krishna⁴, Mohd Sajjad Ahmad Khan⁵, Hamidur Rahman¹, Laishram Rajendrakumar Singh⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biotechnology, Manipur University, Manipur, India.
² Department of Biotechnology, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan-si, South Korea.
³ Department of Botany, Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India.
⁴ Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India.
⁵ Department of Basic Sciences, Deanship of Preparatory Year and Supporting Studies, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Deposition of toxic protein inclusions is a common hallmark of many neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson disease etc. N-acetylaspartate (NAA) is an important brain metabolite whose levels got altered under various neurodegenerative conditions. Indeed, NAA has been a widely accepted biological marker for various neurological disorders. We have also reported that NAA is a protein stabilizer. In the present communication, we investigated the role of NAA in modulating the aggregation propensity on two model proteins (carbonic anhydrase and catalase). We discovered that NAA suppresses protein aggregation and could solubilize preformed aggregates.

Keywords: light scattering; neurological disorders; protein aggregation; protein denaturation; protein stability.