Scientists mapped which parts of the tiny protein Humanin are needed for it to be released from cells and to protect brain cells, finding that a small stretch around Leu9‑Leu11 (especially Leu10) is key for secretion, and several other spots are vital for its protective action and for the protein to pair up with itself.

Humanin (HN) is a secretory peptide that inhibits neurotoxicity by various Alzheimer's disease-relevant insults. We have so far identified that the substitution of Leu9 for Arg nullifies the extracellular secretion of HN. Here we comprehensively investigate the amino acid requirement of HN essential for its secretion and for its neuroprotective function. Intracellulary expressed HN-EGFP (EGFP N-terminally fused with HN) was extracellularly secreted, whereas neither EGFP nor (L9R)HN-EGFP was secreted at all. While Ala substitution of neither residue affected HN secretion, Arg substitution revealed that the two structures-Leu9-Leu11 and Pro19-Va120-were essential for the secretion of full-length HN. In the Leu9-Leu11 domain, the Leu10 residue turned out to play a central role in this function, because the Asp substitution of Leu10, but not Leu9 or Leu11, nullified the secretion of HN. Utilizing Ala-scanned HN constructs, we also investigated a comprehensive structure-function relationship for the neuroprotective function of full-length HN, which revealed (i) that Pro3, Ser7, Cys8, Leu9, Leu12, Thr13, Ser14, and Pro19 were essential for this function and (ii) that Ser7 and Leu9 were essential for self-dimerization of HN. These findings indicate that HN has activity similar to a signal peptide, for which the Leu9-Leu11 region, particularly Leu10, functions as a core domain, and suggest that self-dimerization of HN is a process essential for its neuroprotective function.