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Translocation of -Synuclein Expressed in Escherichia coli

Guoping Ren,^1,2, Xi Wang,^1,2, Shufeng Hao,¹ Hongyu Hu,³ and Chih-chen Wang^1*

National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China,¹ Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China,² Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China³

Received 5 September 2006/ Accepted 7 January 2007

-Synuclein is a major component of Lewy bodies in Parkinson's disease. Although no signal sequence is apparent, -synuclein expressed in Escherichia coli is mostly located in the periplasm. The possibilities that -synuclein translocated into the periplasm across the inner membrane by the SecA or the Tat targeting route identified in bacteria and that -synuclein was released through MscL were excluded. The signal recognition particle-dependent pathway is involved in the translocation of -synuclein. The C-terminal 99-to-140 portion of the -synuclein molecule plays a signal-like role for its translocation into the periplasm, cooperating with the central 61-to-95 section. The N-terminal 1-to-60 region is not required for this translocation.

Published ahead of print on 2 February 2007.

G.R. and X.W. contributed equally to this work.