Amyloid plaques, composed mainly of the 39-43 amino acid A4 peptide, are a characteristic feature of Alzheimer's disease. Generation of A4 by proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) is thought to occur in a pathway that includes the activity of two as yet unknown proteases, with -secretase cleaving at the N terminus and ␥-secretase releasing the C terminus of A4. Inhibition studies and the finding that cell surface APP can serve as a direct precursor of A4 suggest that the endosomal/lysosomal compartment is involved in the proteolysis of APP into A4.In this study we targeted APP695 chimeric proteins directly into the endosomal/lysosomal compartment. This decreased the amount of released A4, while the generation of the A4 N terminus continued. APP695 proteins were constructed also, which carried sorting signals responsible for recycling between the trans-Golgi network (TGN) and the cell surface. These proteins were processed into secreted A4 at even higher levels than wild-type APP695. Moreover, retention of APP695 proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum led to neither A4 secretion nor to processing by -secretase in human SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells.These data suggest that a -cleavage activity resides in a late endosomal compartment and that a ␥-cleavage occurs in early endosomes, resulting in the generation of A4 peptides with the majority ending at residue 40.
Key words: Alzheimer's disease; APP processing; -amyloid; chimeric proteins; endosomal/lysosomal compartment; transportA major histopathological marker of Alzheimer's disease is the presence of cerebral amyloid plaques, which are composed mainly of the insoluble 4 kDa A4 peptide (Glenner and Wong, 1984;Masters et al., 1985). A4 derives from the larger amyloid precursor protein (APP) by the activity of two proteases termed -and ␥-secretase (Kang et al., 1987). During its transport through the constitutive secretory pathway a proportion of APP is secreted by cleavage within the A4 sequence, thereby precluding the generation of A4 (Weidemann et al., 1989;Esch et al., 1990).In an alternative pathway involving the endosomal/lysosomal system, APP is processed into C-terminal fragments that contain the entire A4 domain (Cole et al., 1989;Golde et al., 1992;Haass et al., 1992a). Although indicating the potential importance of this part in amyloidogenic processing, these fragments also have been proposed to be intermediates of the final degradation of APP in lysosomes . However, various agents that interfere with pH gradients reduce the generation of A4 drastically (Haass et al., 1992b;Shoji et al., 1992), supporting the idea that an acidic compartment is necessary for A4 formation.To analyze the involvement of the endosomal/lysosomal system in the processing of APP695 into A4, we created APP695 chimeras by exchanging the cytoplasmic domain of APP695 with that of the human lysosomal-associated membrane protein-1 (hLAMP-1) and the human cation-dependent mannose 6-phosphate receptor (CD-MPR). These APP hybrids were expected...