Loss of the Alzheimer's-linked bridging integrator 1 (BIN1) protein affects synaptic structure and disrupts tau localisation and release

Background: Post-translational modifications of tau modify its interaction with binding partners and cause tau mislocalisation and altered tau function in Alzheimer9s disease (AD). The AD risk gene BIN1, is a binding partner for tau, however the mechanism by which BIN1 influences tau function is not fully understood. We hypothesised that BIN1 modulates AD risk by causing damaging tau mis-sorting to the synapse. Methods: Tau and BIN1 levels, distribution and interactions were assessed in post-mortem control and AD brain and in primary neurons. In primary neurons, tau was further examined using structured illumination microscopy and immunoblotting following BIN1 knockdown, BIN1-tau interactions were examined using proximity ligation assays and tau release from neurons was measured by sensitive sandwich ELISA. Results: Proline 216 in tau was identified as critical for tau interaction with the BIN1-SH3 domain, and tau phosphorylation at serine/threonine residues disrupted this interaction. Subcellular fractionation showed that BIN1 is lost from the cytoplasm of AD brain and this correlated with the mislocalisation of phosphorylated tau to synapses. Mimicking BIN1 loss in AD by knockdown of the protein in primary neurons altered the structure of dendritic spines, caused phosphorylated tau to mis-sort to synapses and reduced the physiological release of predominantly dephosphorylated tau. Conclusions: These data suggest that BIN1 loss in AD allows phosphorylated tau to be mis-sorted to synapses which likely alters the integrity of the post-synapse, alongside reducing the functionally important release of physiological forms of tau.