-Amyloid peptides (A) are the major component of plaques in brains of Alzheimer's patients, and are they derived from the proteolytic processing of the -amyloid precursor protein (APP). The movement of APP between organelles is highly regulated, and it is tightly connected to its processing by secretases. We proposed previously that transport of APP within the cell is mediated in part through its sorting into Mint/X11-containing carriers. To test our hypothesis, we purified APP-containing vesicles from human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells, and we showed that Mint2/3 are specifically enriched and that Mint3 and APP are present in the same vesicles. Increasing cellular APP levels increased the amounts of both APP and Mint3 in purified vesicles. Additional evidence supporting an obligate role for Mint3 in traffic of APP from the trans-Golgi network to the plasma membrane include the observations that depletion of Mint3 by small interference RNA (siRNA) or mutation of the Mint binding domain of APP changes the export route of APP from the basolateral to the endosomal/lysosomal sorting route. Finally, we show that increased expression of Mint3 decreased and siRNA-mediated knockdowns increased the secretion of the neurotoxic -amyloid peptide, A 1-40 . Together, our data implicate Mint3 activity as a critical determinant of post-Golgi APP traffic.
INTRODUCTIONThe hallmark of Alzheimer's disease is the presence in brain of plaques that contain A peptides, formed by the result of proteolytic processing of the -amyloid precursor protein (APP). APP is a ubiquitous, single-pass transmembrane protein of unknown function that is highly expressed in brain. Processing involves the sequential actions of ␣-or -plus ␥-secretases, each of which are found in multiple cellular locations (Kuentzel et al., 1993;Selkoe, 1998;Yan et al., 2001). Although processing may occur at any step, the trans-Golgi network (TGN) is the earliest site at which APP processing is thought to commence, and APP is internalized from the cell surface to endosomal compartments where ␥-secretase also acts (Selkoe et al., 1996;Greenfield et al., 1999;Lah and Levey, 2000;Bagshaw et al., 2003).The C-terminal domain of APP contains the tyrosinebased sorting motif, YENPTY, which is conserved across species and a determinant of APP traffic (Perez et al., 1999;Bonifacino and Traub, 2003;King et al., 2004). Such sorting motifs function by binding specific adaptors to facilitate their selective import into budding carriers and ensure specificity in cargo selection and coat recruitment. The highly conserved phosphotyrosine binding (PTB) domains in all three Mint proteins have been shown previously to bind directly to the YENPXY motif of APP (Borg et al., 1996(Borg et al., , 1998Zhang et al., 1997;Sastre et al., 1998;Tanahashi and Tabira, 1999;Tomita et al., 1999;Ho et al., 2002;Araki et al., 2003). Other PTB domain containing proteins have similarly been shown to bind APP, including the Fe65 (Sabo et al., 1999) family, Dab2 (Howell et al., 1999), JIP1b (King et al....