Density of Sgt1-immunopositive neurons is decreased in the cerebral cortex of Alzheimer's disease brain

Sgt1 was discovered as a protein required for the mitotic activity of kinetochore and for the activity of ubiquitin ligase in yeast Kitagawa, K., Skowyra, D., Elledge, S.J., Harper, J.W., Hieter, P., 1999. SGT1 encodes an essential component of the yeast kinetochore assembly pathway and a novel subunit of the SCF ubiquitin ligase complex. Mol. Cell 4, 21-33.]. Later, Sgt1 was identified in different organisms including mammals where it was found at high level in the brain. To understand Sgt1 function in this tissue we analyzed its localization in human brain by immunohistochemistry. In normal brain we observed Sgt1-immunostaining in Purkinje cells of the cerebellum, in granule cells of the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus and in multiple neurons of the cortex. By Western blotting we found a higher level of this protein in the cortex than in the cerebellum. Subsequent morphometric analyses showed that the density of Sgt1-immunopositive neurons varied in different cortical regions. The highest density of Sgt1-immunopositive cells was seen in the temporal cortex (from 1.2% to 5.7%), and the lowest - in the entorhinal cortex (from 0 to 1.1% of all neurons). We next compared the density of Sgt1-immunopositive neurons in cortical layers of healthy aged and Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain sections. A significant decrease in Sgt1-immunopositive neurons was found in the temporal (up to 25-fold), angular (up to 11-fold) and posterior cingulate cortex (up to five-fold). In the entorhinal and precentral cortex the reduction of Sgt1-immunopositive neurons was only about two-fold in AD brains as compared to healthy aged ones. The presence of Sgt1 in post-mitotic neurons indicates the involvement of this protein in a process different from that required for activity of the kinetochore. Decreased immunostaining in AD cortex point to Sgt1 as a possible marker of neurons degenerating in AD.