{"id":311063,"date":"2026-02-26T10:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/311063\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T10:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:00:09","slug":"research-maps-lysosomal-proteins-to-study-neurodegeneration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/311063\/","title":{"rendered":"Research maps lysosomal proteins to study neurodegeneration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stanford researchers constructed an atlas of the proteins found in the lysosome across different brain cell types, a recently published<\/a> paper reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lysosomes are cell organelles that play essential roles in recycling \u201cgarbage\u201d in a cell, and their breakdown can lead to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer\u2019s and Parkinson\u2019s. The atlas provided scientists with insights into lysosomes\u2019 function and breakdown \u2014 processes that were still widely under-researched.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is, which one of these cell [types] is the most affected in these different types of [neurodegenerative] diseases?\u201d said Monther Abu-Remaileh, senior author on the paper and assistant professor of chemical engineering and genetics at Stanford. He also leads<\/a> the Abu-Remaileh Lab. \u201cYou can look at this by starting off by defining where these proteins that are affected in neurological diseases mostly exist, in lysosomes of which cell types.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past, research investigating cell organelles like lysosomes was very time-consuming and challenging to conduct. Prior work conducted by Abu-Remaileh created<\/a> a new protocol, called LysoIP, that uses magnetic protein tags to isolate and preserve lysosomes from the cell rapidly and effectively. This new method set the foundation to be able to analyze the protein contents of lysosomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The team was \u201cable to look directly in lysosomes from different cell types, by simply fishing them out from the cells,\u201d Abu-Remaileh said. \u201cNow you can look at the full spectrum of molecules that exist inside them, and define which proteins related to disease are actually in lysosomes of neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and microglia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Constructing the atlas yielded an array of insights about lysosomes and neurodegenerative diseases. They found that lysosomes share core proteins across different cell types, but many of their specialized cell-specific proteins are associated with neurodegenerative and neurological diseases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The atlas also identified important proteins that weren\u2019t previously recognized to be found in the lysosome.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe discovered a new lysosomal protein\u2026 SLC45A1: a transporter that is only expressed in neurons and enriched in lysosomes, the challenge was to find a function for that,\u201d said Ali Ghoochani, co-first author on the paper and research scientist in the Abu-Remaileh Lab.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s like you are in the ocean, and you don\u2019t know which direction you have to swim. We needed to set up a lot of experiments to understand the function of SLC45A1.\u201d<\/p>\n

SLC45A1 was previously thought to be associated with neuron membranes, not lysosomes. \u201cThis data will put it in a completely different category, different fields will be interested in it,\u201d\u00a0Abu-Remaileh said. \u201cMost importantly, it will get us even closer to a real therapy instead of focusing for many years on things that will end up failing because you are not defining the disease in the right way at the molecular level.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team hopes this atlas will serve as a practical tool and launching pad for other scientists. \u201c[If] you are interested in a protein because it\u2019s linked to a disease that you are studying, or is coming out of one of your screens, now you can go into our database and see immediately if it might have something to do with the lysosome,\u201d said Alessandro Ori, associated research group leader at the Leibniz Institute on Aging of the Fritz Lipmann Institute, which collaborated<\/a> with the Stanford team on the paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur paper demonstrated these kinds of things are possible, and now people can just build on it,\u201d\u00a0Ori said. \u201cWe provide all the methods\u2026 for people to take over and do more experiments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, the team hopes to investigate the many connections that have appeared between lysosomal protein composition and neurological disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see very, very specific characteristic alteration of the composition of the lysosomes [across different cell types],\u201d Ori said. \u201cThis is telling us something fundamental about disease pathobiology, which is something that we are pushing quite substantially now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stanford researchers constructed an atlas of the proteins found in the lysosome across different brain cell types, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[11076,155859,155860,9524,701,1353,33759,555,5352,377,155861,85,21558,46,155862,22024,155863,22529,168,155864,1360,16428,141,17227],"class_list":{"0":"post-311063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-academic-research","9":"tag-alessandro-ori","10":"tag-ali-ghoochani","11":"tag-alzheimers","12":"tag-biology","13":"tag-cell","14":"tag-chemical-engineering","15":"tag-disease","16":"tag-gene","17":"tag-genetics","18":"tag-groundbreaking","19":"tag-il","20":"tag-investigation","21":"tag-israel","22":"tag-method","23":"tag-molecules","24":"tag-monther-abu-remaileh","25":"tag-neurodegenerative","26":"tag-neurology","27":"tag-parkinsonu2019s","28":"tag-research","29":"tag-researchers","30":"tag-science","31":"tag-solutions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}