Extracellular proteolysis of reelin by tissue plasminogen activator following synaptic potentiation

• Reelin is important in adult synaptic plasticity and learning and memory.
• How reelin is regulated remains to be elucidated.
• tPA KO mice do not show alterations in basal reelin levels.
• tPA KO mice lack the activity-dependent reelin processing that wild-type mice show.
• Reelin is processed by tPA following chemically induced synaptic activation.

The secreted glycoprotein reelin plays an indispensable role in neuronal migration during development and in regulating adult synaptic functions. The upstream mechanisms responsible for initiating and regulating the duration and magnitude of reelin signaling are largely unknown. Here we report that reelin is cleaved between EGF-like repeats 6–7 (R6–7) by tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) under cell-free conditions. No changes were detected in the level of reelin and its fragments in the brains of tPA knockouts, implying that other unknown proteases are responsible for generating reelin fragments found constitutively in the adult brain. Induction of NMDAR-independent long-term potentiation with the potassium channel blocker tetraethylammonium chloride (TEA-Cl) led to a specific up-regulation of reelin processing at R6–7 in wild-type mice. In contrast, no changes in reelin expression and processing were observed in tPA knockouts following TEA-Cl treatment. These results demonstrate that synaptic potentiation results in tPA-dependent reelin processing and suggest that extracellular proteolysis of reelin may regulate reelin signaling in the adult brain.