Alzheimer’s disease brain contains tau fractions with differential prion-like activities

Neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) made of abnormally hyperphosphorylated tau are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related tauopathies. Regional distribution of NFTs is associated with the progression of the disease and has been proposed to be a result of prion-like propagation of misfolded tau. Tau in AD brain is heterogenous and presents in various forms. In the present study, we prepared different tau fractions by sedimentation combined with sarkosyl solubility from AD brains and analyzed their biochemical and pathological properties. We found that tau in oligomeric fraction (O-tau), sarkosyl-insoluble fractions 1 and 2 (SI(1)-tau and SI(2)-tau) and monomeric heat-stable fraction (HS-tau) showed differences in truncation, hyperphosphorylation, and resistance to proteinase K. O-tau, SI(1)-tau, and SI(2)-tau, but not HS-tau, were hyperphosphorylated at multiple sites and contained SDS- and β-mercaptoethanol–resistant high molecular weight aggregates, which lacked the N-terminal portion of tau. O-tau and SI(2)-tau displayed more truncation and less hyperphosphorylation than SI(1)-tau. Resistance to proteinase K was increased from O-tau to SI(1)-tau to SI(2)-tau. O-tau and SI(1)-tau, but not SI(2)-tau or HS-tau, captured tau from cell lysates and seeded tau aggregation in cultured cells. Heat treatment could not kill the prion-like activity of O-tau to capture normal tau. Hippocampal injection of O-tau into 18-month-old FVB mice induced significant tau aggregation in both ipsilateral and contralateral hippocampi, but SI(1)-tau only induced tau pathology in the ipsilateral hippocampus, and SI(2)-tau and HS-tau failed to induce any detectable tau aggregation. These findings suggest that O-tau and SI(1)-tau have prion-like activities and may serve as seeds to recruit tau and template tau to aggregate, resulting in the propagation of tau pathology. Heterogeneity of tau pathology within AD brain results in different fractions with different biological and prion-like properties, which may pose a major challenge in targeting tau for development of effective therapeutic treatments.