By artificially exposing FUS proteins to the natural process of phosphorylation, researchers were able to prevent them from forming the harmful clumps associated with ALS and frontotemporal dementia.

Scientists report in a new study that by imitating a natural process of cells, they prevented the formation of protein clumps associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia.

In lab cultures of human and yeast cells, the scientists stopped the harmful clumping of FUS proteins by exposing them to phosphorylation, a process that makes precise changes to the amino acid building blocks of proteins, increasing their negative electric charge. The research shows that the increase in charge causes the proteins to repel when they normally might aggregate.

The findings could eventually have positive implications for the treatment of ALS and dementia.

“No one has shown that you can use charge, and phosphorylation as a way to get charge, to disrupt these ALS–associated protein aggregates,” said co–corresponding author Nicolas Fawzi, an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology at Brown University.

Phosphorylation occurs in cells throughout the body for various reasons. Cells perform it on FUS proteins as part of a sequence of events related to DNA damage. In the new study, the researchers examined both natural phosphorylation and artificial phosphorylation by replacing specific amino acids in FUS proteins.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers at Brown, the Uniformed Services University, Johns Hopkins University, Lehigh University and the National Institutes of Health, appeared in the EMBO Journal.

Fawzi hypothesized that because phosphorylation is a natural process of cells, the key may be finding a “switch” to turn it on when needed. He also noted that many pharmaceutical companies have very active research groups dedicated to harnessing the phosphorylating enzymes known as kinases like DNA–PK.

A future therapy, he said, would have to be targeted — localized in the brain in the case of frontotemporal dementia, or focused on motor neurons in the case of ALS. Phosphorylating FUS in the body more generally could be harmful, given that it is presumed to have important roles in helping cells process RNA and may have a role in repairing DNA.

For now, the collaboration is focused on testing phosphorylation specifically in a model of a neurodegenerative disease, rather than in cells in general, Fawzi said.