Abstract
Despite a 95% sequence similarity, the aggregation of human and mouse α-synuclein is remarkably different, as the human form is slower than the mouse form in forming fibrils, but is associated with Parkinson’s disease both in humans and transgenic mice. Here, the amino acid code underlying these differences is investigated by comparing the lag times, growth rates and secondary structure propensities of a systematic series of eight human-mouse chimeras. Fluorescence analysis of the human-mouse variants shows that the A53T substitution dominates the growth kinetics, while the lag phase is affected by a combination of the A53T and S87N substitutions. The secondary structure propensities derived from an NMR chemical shift analysis of the monomeric forms of the human-mouse variants enables us to establish a link between the changes in the conformational properties in the region of position 53 upon mutation and the corresponding changes in growth rates. These results suggest that the presence of an alanine residue at position 53 may be an evolutionary adaptation to minimize Parkinson’s disease in humans and indicates that effective drug development efforts may be directed to target this N-terminal region of the sequence.