Targeted Raman Visualization and Mitigation of α-Synuclein Amyloidogenesis in Living Zebrafish by a
Liyuan Zhao1,2, Yujuan Cao1, Yanru Xin1
1National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, P. R. China.
Abstract:
α-Synuclein (α-Syn) amyloidogenesis is considered a promising diagnostic marker and therapeutic target for Parkinson's disease (PD). Simultaneously visualizing and mitigating α-Syn amyloidogenesis are essential for future PD theranostics, yet they continue to pose an insurmountable challenge. This study have herein developed a nanobody-decorated polydiacetylene to approach a straightforward solution. Grafting α-Syn61-95 segment into the third complementary determining region of a parent nanobody generates an engineered nanobody X30 that can bind with α-Syn and prevent its amyloidogenesis through homotypic interaction. It next use X30 to decorate poly(deca-4,6-diynedioic acid) (PDDA), a polydiacetylene with an ultrastrong alkyne Raman signal (2120 cm-1) in the cellular silent region, to create an α-Syn targeting Raman probe PX30. The binding affinity between X30 and α-Syn can be further boosted for over 150 times attributed to the rigidity of PDDA backbone and the multivalent effect. Therefore, PX30 not only enables real-time Raman visualization of α-Syn amyloidogenesis with a high signal-to-noise ratio in living zebrafish, but also alleviates amyloidogenesis-mediated damage to zebrafish embryos by effectively inhibiting α-Syn amyloidogenesis at low stoichiometric concentrations and scavenging pathologic reactive oxygen species.


