Tau protein modulates an epigenetic mechanism of cellular senescence

Progressive Tau deposition in neurofibrillary tangles and neuropil threads is the hallmark of tauopathies, a disorder group that includes Alzheimers disease. Since Tau is a microtubule-associated protein, a prevalent concept to explain the pathogenesis of tauopathies is that abnormal Tau modification contributes to dissociation from microtubules, assembly into multimeric {beta}-sheets, proteotoxicity, neuronal dysfunction and cell loss. Tau also localizes in the cell nucleus and evidence supports an emerging function of Tau in DNA stability and epigenetic modulation. To better characterize the possible role of Tau in regulation of chromatin compaction and subsequent gene expression, we performed a bioinformatics analysis of transcriptome data obtained from Tau-depleted human neuroblastoma cells. Among the transcripts deregulated in a Tau-dependent manner, we found an enrichment of target genes for the polycomb repressive complex 2. We further describe decreased cellular amounts of the core components of the polycomb repressive complex 2 complex and a lower histone 3 trimethylation activity in Tau deficient cells. Among the de-repressed polycomb repressive complex 2 target gene products, IGFBP3 protein was found to be linked to increased senescence induction in Tau-deficient cells. Our findings propose a mechanism for Tau-dependent epigenetic modulation of cell senescence, a key event in pathologic aging.