Integrative Profiling of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Lymphoblasts Identifies Unique Metabolic and Mitochondrial Disease Fingerprints
Abstract Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease with a rapid progression and no effective treatment. Metabolic and mitochondrial alterations in peripheral tissues of ALS patients may present diagnostic and therapeutic interest. We aimed to identify mitochondrial fingerprints in lymphoblast from ALS patients harboring SOD1 mutations (mutSOD1) or with unidentified mutations (undSOD1), compared with age/sex matched controls. Three groups of lymphoblasts, from mutSOD1 or undSOD1 ALS patients and age/sex-matched controls, were obtained from Coriell Biobank and divided into 3 age/sex-matched cohorts. Mitochondria-associated metabolic pathways were analyzed using Seahorse MitoStress and ATP Rate assays, complemented with metabolic phenotype microarrays, metabolite levels, gene expression, and protein expression and activity. Pooled (all cohorts) and paired (intra-cohort) analyses were performed by using bioinformatic tools, and the features with higher information gain values were selected and used for principal component analysis and Naïve Bayes classification. Pooled analysis revealed that undSOD1 patients had statistically higher glycolytic ATP production rate and lower Tfam protein content compared to controls, which were also the experimental features highlighted by multidimensional analysis. Metabolic phenotypic profiles in lymphoblasts from ALS patients with mutSOD1 and undSOD1 revealed unique age-dependent different substrate oxidation profiles. For most parameters, different patterns of variation were found between cohorts, which may be due to age or sex. In the present work, we investigated several metabolic and mitochondrial hallmarks in lymphoblasts from each donor and, although a high heterogeneity of results was found, we identified specific metabolic and mitochondrial fingerprints that may have a diagnostic and therapeutic interest.