Fate and propagation of endogenously formed Tau aggregates in neuronal cells (2020)
Figure 4

Figure 4: Seeding of Tau after cell-cell contact-dependent transfer

(A) Below the schematic representation of the experiment are representative confocal images of two-day co-cultures of RD-YFP SH cells (acceptor cells) with K18-ATTO 594 fibrils-treated SH-SY5Y cells (donor cells, upper panel). Bottom panels are acceptor cells cultured with the supernatant of K18-ATTO 594 fibrils-treated SH-SY5Y cells (donor SN). WGA (white) labels cell membrane and DAPI the nuclei in the merge panels. Arrows point to cells with green and red aggregates, scale bars are 20 μm.

(B) Quantification of seeding after transfer in RD-YFP SH cells in the experiments described in (A), depending on the condition (donor cells or donor SN). Analysis was performed using ICY software, data represent the number of aggregate-containing cells over the total number of green cells ±SD (the total number of RD-YFP cells analyzed over 3 independent experiments were 1011 for co-culture and 1265 for SN) with statistical analysis by two-tailed unpaired t-test (****P =4.18E-07).

(C) Below the schematic representation of the experiment are representative confocal images showing maximal intensity projections of 6 z-slices (covering 2 μm of thickness) of 24-hour co-culture of RD-YFP SH cells (acceptor cells) with RD-YFP SH cells expressing nls-Red and challenged with K18-ATTO 594 fibrils (donor cells). WGA (white) labels cell membrane and DAPI the nuclei in the merge panel. Stars label donor cells containing green and red aggregates, arrows indicate an acceptor cell with green and red aggregates, and the arrowheads show an acceptor cell with green aggregates but devoid of red fibrils. Below are two-fold enlargement of the respective framed cells. The apparent discontinuity in the picture corresponds to the boundary between two adjacent tiles. Scale bars are 10 μm, 5 μm in the enlargements.

(D) Analysis using ICY software of the percentage of cells containing red fibrils among the population of cells containing green aggregates. The graph shows the mean percentages with SEM, respectively 66.3% and 36.9% for donor and acceptor cells, statistical analysis was performed by two-tailed unpaired t-test (**** p =3.65E-05).

(E) Dot plot showing the number of red fibrils per cell with SEM among the population of cells containing green and red aggregates. Each analyzed cell is represented (note that because of the chosen scale, 6 data points are outside the axis limits), the bars indicate the means ± SEM (respectively 3.9 and 1.9 for donor and acceptor cells), statistical analysis was performed by two-tailed unpaired t-test (** p=0.0015).

(F) Analysis of the number of green dots per cell among the population of cells containing green aggregates. Each analyzed cell is represented on the dot plot, the bars indicate the means ± SEM (respectively 30.2, 26.1, 32.0, and 32.2). Statistical analysis was performed by one-way ANOVA and Tukey post-hoc test and all the pair-wise comparisons were not significant (n.s.).

Data information: For (D, E, F), counts were performed over 3 independent experiments using Spot detector wizard under Icy software (scale 1, same threshold applied over all pictures), with a total number of analyzed cells of 222 for donor cells (136 containing red fibrils, 86 without) and 207 for acceptor cells (82 containing red fibrils, 125 without).