Fig. 5

Tau mutations mimicking post-translational modifications to T231 and K274/281 reduce the number of mitolysosomes, but not baseline mitophagy. a-f Representative fluorescent images from the PLM cell bodies expressing single-copy TauT4 or T231E, together with the biosensor mito-mKeima. Mitochondria at neutral pH have been pseudo-colored green, and organelles that have been incorporated via mitophagy into acidic vesicles have been pseudo colored red. Scale bars: 5 μm. g, i Background corrected 550-nm excitation / 600-nm emission values were divided by 440-nm excitation / 600-nm emission values to obtain a mitophagy index for PLM cell bodies from Dendra2, TauT4, and T231A, T231E, and K274/281Q PTM mutants at day 3 and day 10 of adulthood. h, j Quantitative analysis of the number of mitolysosomes containing mitochondria in the distal PLM cell bodies of day 3 and day 10 adult animals as a function of tau genotype, as indicated. Data are the mean ± SEM from three independent technical replicates performed on different days. Individual data points demarcate values from single PLM cells from separate animals (N = 35 ± 5). Statistical analysis within day 3 and day 10 datasets was by one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test, with *** P < 0.001, **P < 0.01, *P < 0.05 when comparing bracketed samples. Comparisons between day 3 with day 10 data were limited to within a single genotype, and significance was determined by Student’s t-test, with ^# P < 0.05