The importance of sHSPs in disease was originally noted from the observations that HSPB1 and CRYAB were overexpressed in AD brains (Shinohara et al., 1993; Renkawek et al., 1994a,b) and HSPB1, CRYAB, HSPB6 and HSPB8 were associated with AD plaques (Shao et al., 2012).
Genetic approaches using these disease models demonstrate that the chaperome plays a crucial role in protecting cells from proteotoxicity.
Compounds such as the allosteric inhibitor of ATP-binding for the inducible HSP70 isoform HSPA1A/HSPA1B, called HS-72, will likely lead to beneficial consequences (Howe et al., 2014).
The HSP70 and HSP40 family members exhibit significantly altered expression dynamics during aging in the human brain, both being consistently repressed with age (Brehme et al., 2014).
Furthermore, sHSPs were found to be consistently upregulated in the aging human brain and in the context of neurodegenerative diseases (Brehme et al., 2014).
Many studies based on model systems support a role for candidates from each of the major chaperome families; HSP100, HSP90, HSP70, HSP60, HSP40, sHSPs, and TPR-domain-containing proteins in proteostasis.
Our summary (Table 1) points towards specific sHSPs that play a prominent role in misfolding diseases, as judged by frequency of observations, including CRYAB, HSPB1, HSPB3 and HSPB8 (each 7×), HSPB6 (6×), and CRYAA (5×) (Fig. 1).
The HSP40, HSP60 and HSP70 families were amongst the most repressed chaperones, with HSP70s being the most repressed group overall. However, in contrast with the broad spectrum of repressed chaperone families, sHSPs and the TPR co-chaperone proteins were the only families that were significantly induced.
In a yeast model expressing the N-terminal fragment of a polyQ-containing huntingtin protein, overexpression of the yeast HSP70 (SSA1) reduced aggregate formation, whereas the dominant-negative version of the fly homolog to HSPA1L, Hsc4-K71S, enhanced neurodegeneration (Warrick et al., 1999;)
These studies revealed that an increase in levels of HSP70 reduced aggregation of disease-associated proteins, thus playing a neuroprotective role.
HSP70s function in a variety of basic cellular quality control and maintenance processes, such as proper folding of newly synthesized proteins, along with preventing protein misfolding and aggregation through the binding of exposed hydrophobic residues.
Multiple studies in model systems demonstrate that overexpression of HSP70 can reduce toxicity and protein aggregation.
Although HSP70 was not identified as a modifier of α -synuclein in the screen studies we selected, directed overexpression of HSP70 has been shown to reduce α -synuclein-related proteotoxicity, supporting a central role for HSP70 in diseases of protein misfolding (Auluck et al., 2002).
Early studies demonstrated that overexpression of a specific human HSP70 (HSPA1L) in a Drosophila disease model suppressed neurodegeneration associated with expression of polyQ-containing forms of both ataxin 3 or androgen receptor, and α -synuclein (Warrick et al., 1999; Chan et al., 2000, 2002; Auluck et al., 2002).
Therapeutic approaches to overcome proteostasis deficiencies have largely focused on the activation of HSF1, the heat shock transcription factor responsible for simultaneous upregulation of the expression of multiple molecular chaperones during stress (Calamini et al., 2011; Pierce et al., 2013).
In addition to co-chaperones, overexpression of the human sHSP (HSPB7), a Caenorhabditis elegans HSP100 homolog (tor-2), and the yeast HSP60 subunit (CCT-1) and HSP90 homolog (HSP82) reduced toxicity and aggregation (Cao et al., 2005; Tam et al., 2006; Liang et al., 2008; Vos et al., 2010).
For example, overexpression of the human TPR domain-containing co- chaperone CHIP suppresses neurodegeneration in fly models expressing polyQ-containing versions of ataxin 1 and the N-terminal huntingtin fragment (Al-Ramahi et al., 2006).
HSP40s play a fundamental role as part of the HSP70-HSP40 system, as co-chaperones, stimulating HSP70 ATP hydrolysis (Fig. 3) (Kampinga and Craig, 2010; Kakkar et al., 2014).
Likewise, overexpression of the yeast TPR-domain-containing co- chaperone STI1 suppresses toxicity in a yeast model expressing the expanded huntingtin fragment (Wolfe et al., 2013).
The co- chaperone HSP40 (dHdj-1 and SIS1) and the nucleotide exchange factor SSE1 that specifically modulate HSP70 activity were also shown to suppress toxicity and aggregation in yeast and fly disease models (Chan et al., 2000; Krobitsch and Lindquist, 2000; Sadlish et al., 2008).
Among repressed genes, HSP40s were found to show significant changes as a family, with 62% of overall 48 HSP40 family members repressed in aging brain (superior frontal gyrus), 51% repressed in AD, and 41% repressed in both aging and AD.
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If you find BEL Commons useful in your work, please consider citing: Hoyt, C. T., Domingo-Fernández, D., & Hofmann-Apitius, M. (2018). BEL Commons: an environment for exploration and analysis of networks encoded in Biological Expression Language. Database, 2018(3), 1–11.