Publications | TDP-43 loss of function drives aberrant splicing in Parkinson’s disease

While mRNA splicing dysregulation is a well-established contributor to neurodegeneration in disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), its role in Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains underexplored. Here, we analyse transcriptomic data from >500 post-mortem human brain samples from individuals with and without PD to show that splicing alterations are frequently detected. Differentially spliced genes were significantly more enriched for those causally-implicated in both PD and ALS than genes that were differentially expressed. Furthermore, we observed a strong association between these splicing alterations and dysfunction of the RNA-binding protein (RBP), TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43). Strikingly, genes and exon junctions affected by TDP-43 knockdown overlapped significantly with those dysregulated across brain regions in PD. In brains from individuals with the LRRK2 c.6055G>A (p.G2019S) mutation, the most common genetic cause of PD, we also observed significant enrichment of TDP-43-dependent splicing changes. This finding was corroborated in human pluripotent stem cell-derived midbrain dopaminergic neurons and a LRRK2 p.G2019S knock-in mouse model, where reduced nuclear TDP-43 levels evidenced the well-recognised loss-of-function mechanism contributing to splicing dysregulation. By leveraging our RNA-based analyses we predicted TDP-43-dependent novel peptide sequences and validated their existence within human LRRK2 mutation mDNs, while also demonstrating an overall loss of protein and mRNA expression in mis-spliced genes. Collectively, our findings reveal that PD is marked by extensive splicing dysregulation dependent on TDP-43, making TDP-43 a promising new therapeutic target in PD.

Principal Investigator(s):

Author(s):
Jonathan W. Brenton, Jordan Follett, Raja Nirujogi, Christina E. Toomey, Patrica Lopez-Garcia, James R. Evans, Yeon J. Lee, Khaja Mohieddin Syed, Guillermo Rocamora Perez, Áine Fairbrother-Browne, Karishma D’Sa, Melissa Grant-Peters, Joanne Lachica, Amy R. Hicks, Aaron Z. Wagen, Benjamin O’Callaghan, Hannah Macpherson, Kylie-ann Montgomery, Oriol Busquets, Regina H. Reynolds, Sonia Garcia Ruiz, Tianyu Cao, Zhongbo Chen, Hélène Plun-Favreau, Philip C. Wong, Matthew Farrer, Tammaryn Lashley, Frank Soldner, Dirk Hockemeyer, Dario Alessi, Nicholas W. Wood, John Hardy, Donald C. Rio, Zane Jaunmuktane, Emil K. Gustavsson, Sonia Gandhi, Mina Ryten

Paper:
Online paper
Citation:
Jonathan W. Brenton, Jordan Follett, Raja Nirujogi, Christina E. Toomey, Patrica Lopez-Garcia, James R. Evans, Yeon J. Lee, Khaja Mohieddin Syed, Guillermo Rocamora Perez, Áine Fairbrother-Browne, Karishma D’Sa, Melissa Grant-Peters, Joanne Lachica, Amy R. Hicks, Aaron Z. Wagen, Benjamin O’Callaghan, Hannah Macpherson, Kylie-ann Montgomery, Oriol Busquets, Regina H. Reynolds, Sonia Garcia Ruiz, Tianyu Cao, Zhongbo Chen, Hélène Plun-Favreau, Philip C. Wong, Matthew Farrer, Tammaryn Lashley, Frank Soldner, Dirk Hockemeyer, Dario Alessi, Nicholas W. Wood, John Hardy, Donald C. Rio, Zane Jaunmuktane, Emil K. Gustavsson, Sonia Gandhi, Mina Ryten
bioRxiv
2025
Sep
doi:
10.1101/2025.09.04.673943