TDP-43: gumming up neurons through protein–protein and protein–RNA interactions

Since the discovery that 43 kDa TAR DNA binding protein (TDP-43) is involved in neurodegeneration, studies of this protein have focused on the global effects of TDP-43 expression modulation on cell metabolism and survival. The major difficulty with these global searches, which can yield hundreds to thousands of variations in gene expression level and/or mRNA isoforms, is our limited ability to separate specific TDP-43 effects from secondary dysregulations occurring at the gene expression and various mRNA processing steps. In this review, we focus on two biochemical properties of TDP-43: its ability to bind RNA and its protein–protein interactions. In particular, we overview how these two properties may affect potentially very important processes for the pathology, from the autoregulation of TDP-43 to aggregation in the cytoplasmic/nuclear compartments.