{"doi":"10.7554/elife.53111","title":"A gut bacterial amyloid promotes α-synuclein aggregation and motor impairment in mice","abstract":"Amyloids are a class of protein with unique self-aggregation properties, and their aberrant accumulation can lead to cellular dysfunctions associated with neurodegenerative diseases. While genetic and environmental factors can influence amyloid formation, molecular triggers and/or facilitators are not well defined. Growing evidence suggests that non-identical amyloid proteins may accelerate reciprocal amyloid aggregation in a prion-like fashion. While humans encode ~30 amyloidogenic proteins, the gut microbiome also produces functional amyloids. For example, curli are cell surface amyloid proteins abundantly expressed by certain gut bacteria. In mice overexpressing the human amyloid α-synuclein (αSyn), we reveal that colonization with curli-producing Escherichia coli promotes αSyn pathology in the gut and the brain. Curli expression is required for E. coli to exacerbate αSyn-induced behavioral deficits, including intestinal and motor impairments. Purified curli subunits accelerate αSyn aggregation in biochemical assays, while oral treatment of mice with a gut-restricted amyloid inhibitor prevents curli-mediated acceleration of pathology and behavioral abnormalities. We propose that exposure to microbial amyloids in the gastrointestinal tract can accelerate αSyn aggregation and disease in the gut and the brain.","journal":"eLife","year":2020,"id":48438,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":419,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9471,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":228764,"name":"Collin Challis","orcid":"0000-0003-4716-6086","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":141403,"name":"Neha Jain","orcid":"0000-0001-6269-5619","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228765,"name":"Anastasiya Moiseyenko","orcid":"0000-0001-5379-7808","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228766,"name":"Mark S. Ladinsky","orcid":"0000-0002-1036-3513","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":229912,"name":"Gauri G. Shastri","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":225248,"name":"Taren Thron","orcid":"0000-0001-9577-2617","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228767,"name":"Brittany D. Needham","orcid":"0000-0002-0280-1886","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228768,"name":"István Horváth","orcid":"0000-0003-4262-1430","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228769,"name":"Justine W. Debelius","orcid":"0000-0002-8605-3546","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":3539,"name":"Stefan Janssen","orcid":"0000-0003-0955-0589","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":3554,"name":"Rob Knight","orcid":"0000-0002-0975-9019","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228770,"name":"Pernilla Wittung‐Stafshede","orcid":"0000-0003-1058-1964","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228771,"name":"Viviana Gradinaru","orcid":"0000-0001-5868-348X","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":225462,"name":"Matthew R. Chapman","orcid":"0000-0002-2645-1294","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":32585,"name":"Sarkis K. Mazmanian","orcid":"0000-0003-2713-1513","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228763,"name":"Timothy R. Sampson","orcid":"0000-0002-2486-8766","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":81,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T20:34:12.647743Z","pmid":"32043464","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}