Synchrotron X-ray study of intrinsically disordered and polyampholytic Tau 4RS and 4RL under controlled ionic strength

Aggregated and hyperphosphorylated Tau is one of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Tau is a polyampholytic and intrinsically disordered protein (IDP). In this paper, we present for the first time experimental results on the ionic strength dependence of the radius of gyration (R g) of human Tau 4RS and 4RL isoforms. Synchrotron X-ray scattering revealed that 4RS R g is regulated from 65.4 to 58.5 Å and 4RL R g is regulated from 70.9 to 57.9 Å by varying ionic strength from 0.01 to 0.592 M. The R g of 4RL Tau is larger than 4RS at lower ionic strength. This result provides an insight into the ion-responsive nature of intrinsically disordered and polyampholytic Tau, and can be implicated to the further study of Tau-Tau and Tau-tubulin intermolecular structure in ionic environments. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].