The intellectual disability gene PQBP1 rescues Alzheimer’s disease pathology

Early-phase pathologies of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are attracting much attention after clinical trials of drugs designed to remove beta-amyloid (Aβ) aggregates failed to recover memory and cognitive function in symptomatic AD patients. Here, we show that phosphorylation of serine/arginine repetitive matrix 2 (SRRM2) at Ser1068, which is observed in the brains of early phase AD mouse models and postmortem end-stage AD patients, prevents its nuclear translocation by inhibiting interaction with T-complex protein subunit α. SRRM2 deficiency in neurons destabilized polyglutamine binding protein 1 (PQBP1), a causative gene for intellectual disability (ID), greatly affecting the splicing patterns of synapse-related genes, as demonstrated in a newly generated PQBP1-conditional knockout model. PQBP1 and SRRM2 were downregulated in cortical neurons of human AD patients and mouse AD models, and the AAV-PQBP1 vector recovered RNA splicing, the synapse phenotype, and the cognitive decline in the two mouse models. Finally, the kinases responsible for the phosphorylation of SRRM2 at Ser1068 were identified as ERK1/2 (MAPK3/1). These results collectively reveal a new aspect of AD pathology in which a phosphorylation signal affecting RNA splicing and synapse integrity precedes the formation of extracellular Aβ aggregates and may progress in parallel with tau phosphorylation.