Fluorescent detection of PARP activity in unfixed tissue

Poly-ADP-ribose-polymerase (PARP) relates to a family of enzymes that can detect DNA breaks and initiate DNA repair. While this activity is generally seen as promoting cell survival, PARP enzymes are also known to be involved in cell death in numerous pathologies, including in inherited retinal degeneration. This ambiguous role of PARP makes it attractive to have a simple and fast enzyme activity assay, that allows resolving its enzymatic activity in situ, in individual cells, within complex tissues. A previously published two-step PARP activity assay uses biotinylated NAD(+) and streptavidin labelling for this purpose. Here, we used the fluorescent NAD(+) analogues ε-NAD(+) and 6-Fluo-10-NAD(+) to assess PARP activity directly on unfixed tissue sections obtained from wild-type and retinal degeneration-1 (rd1) mutant retina. In standard UV microscopy ε-NAD(+) incubation did not reveal PARP specific signal. In contrast, 6-Fluo-10-NAD(+) resulted in reliable detection of in situ PARP activity in rd1 retina, especially in the degenerating photoreceptor cells. When the 6-Fluo-10-NAD(+) based PARP activity assay was performed in the presence of the PARP specific inhibitor olaparib, the activity signal was completely abolished, attesting to the specificity of the assay. The incubation of live organotypic retinal explant cultures with 6-Fluo-10-NAD(+), did not produce PARP specific signal, indicating that the fluorescent marker may not be sufficiently membrane-permeable to label living cells. In summary, we present a new, rapid, and simple to use fluorescence assay for the cellular resolution of PARP activity on unfixed tissue, for instance in complex neuronal tissues such as the retina.