Search results for "BINDING PROTEIN"
showing 10 items of 1292 documents
Beyond the Transport Function of Import Receptors: What’s All the FUS about?
2018
Nuclear import receptors are central players in transporting protein cargoes into the nucleus. Moving beyond this role, four newly published articles describe a function in regulating supramolecular assemblies by fine-tuning the phase separating properties of RNA-binding proteins, which has implications for a variety of devastating neurodegenerative disorders.
Human R1441C LRRK2 regulates the synaptic vesicle proteome and phosphoproteome in a Drosophila model of Parkinson's disease
2016
International audience; Mutations in leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) cause late-onset, autosomal dominant familial Parkinsons disease (PD) and variation at the LRRK2 locus contributes to the risk for idiopathic PD. LRRK2 can function as a protein kinase and mutations lead to increased kinase activity. To elucidate the pathophysiological mechanism of the R1441C mutation in the GTPase domain of LRRK2, we expressed human wild-type or R1441C LRRK2 in dopaminergic neurons of Drosophila and observe reduced locomotor activity, impaired survival and an age-dependent degeneration of dopaminergic neurons thereby creating a new PD-like model. To explore the function of LRRK2 variants in vivo, we …
Small Rab GTPases in Intracellular Vesicle Trafficking: The Case of Rab3A/Raphillin-3A Complex in the Kidney
2021
Small Rab GTPases, the largest group of small monomeric GTPases, regulate vesicle trafficking in cells, which are integral to many cellular processes. Their role in neurological diseases, such as cancer and inflammation have been extensively studied, but their implication in kidney disease has not been researched in depth. Rab3a and its effector Rabphillin-3A (Rph3A) expression have been demonstrated to be present in the podocytes of normal kidneys of mice rats and humans, around vesicles contained in the foot processes, and they are overexpressed in diseases with proteinuria. In addition, the Rab3A knockout mice model induced profound cytoskeletal changes in podocytes of high glucose fed a…
Radial Glial Fibers Promote Neuronal Migration and Functional Recovery after Neonatal Brain Injury.
2018
Radial glia (RG) are embryonic neural stem cells (NSCs) that produce neuroblasts and provide fibers that act as a scaffold for neuroblast migration during embryonic development. Although they normally disappear soon after birth, here we found that RG fibers can persist in injured neonatal mouse brains and act as a scaffold for postnatal ventricular-subventricular zone (V-SVZ)-derived neuroblasts that migrate to the lesion site. This injury-induced maintenance of RG fibers has a limited time window during post-natal development and promotes directional saltatory movement of neuroblasts via N-cadherin-mediated cell-cell contacts that promote RhoA activation. Transplanting an N-cadherin-contai…
The RAB GTPase RAB18 modulates macroautophagy and proteostasis
2017
Macroautophagy is a conserved degradative pathway and its deterioration is linked to disturbances in cellular proteostasis and multiple diseases. Here, we show that the RAB GTPase RAB18 modulates autophagy in primary human fibroblasts. The knockdown of RAB18 results in a decreased autophagic activity, while its overexpression enhances the degradative pathway. Importantly, this function of RAB18 is dependent on RAB3GAP1 and RAB3GAP2, which might act as RAB GEFs and stimulate the activity of the RAB GTPase. Moreover, the knockdown of RAB18 deteriorates proteostasis and results in the intracellular accumulation of ubiquitinated degradation-prone proteins. Thus, the RAB GTPase RAB18 is a positi…
Nucleocytoplasmic transport of the RNA-binding protein CELF2 regulates neural stem cell fates.
2020
The development of the cerebral cortex requires balanced expansion and differentiation of neural stem/progenitor cells (NPCs), which rely on precise regulation of gene expression. Because NPCs often exhibit transcriptional priming of cell-fate-determination genes, the ultimate output of these genes for fate decisions must be carefully controlled in a timely fashion at the post-transcriptional level, but how that is achieved is poorly understood. Here, we report that de novo missense variants in an RNA-binding protein CELF2 cause human cortical malformations and perturb NPC fate decisions in mice by disrupting CELF2 nucleocytoplasmic transport. In self-renewing NPCs, CELF2 resides in the cyt…
Functional impacts of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, 5-formylcytosine, and 5-carboxycytosine at a single hemi-modified CpG dinucleotide in a gene promoter
2017
Abstract Enzymatic oxidation of 5-methylcytosine (5-mC) in the CpG dinucleotides to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC), 5-formylcytosine (5-fC) and 5-carboxycytosine (5-caC) has central role in the process of active DNA demethylation and epigenetic reprogramming in mammals. However, it is not known whether the 5-mC oxidation products have autonomous epigenetic or regulatory functions in the genome. We used an artificial upstream promoter constituted of one cAMP response element (CRE) to measure the impact of 5-mC in a hemi-methylated CpG on the promoter activity and further explored the consequences of 5-hmC, 5-fC, and 5-caC in the same system. All modifications induced mild impairment of the …
Progressive Characterization of Visual Phenotype in Bardet-Biedl Syndrome Mutant Mice
2019
Purpose Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) is an archetypical ciliopathy caused by defective ciliary trafficking and consequent function. Insights gained from BBS mouse models are applicable to other syndromic and nonsyndromic retinal diseases. This progressive characterization of the visual phenotype in three BBS mouse models sets a baseline for testing therapeutic interventions. Methods Longitudinal acquisition of electroretinograms, optical coherence tomography scans, and visual acuity using the optomotor reflex in Bbs6/Mkks, Bbs8/Ttc8, and Bbs5 knockout mice. Gene and protein expression analysis in vivo and in vitro. Results Complete loss of BBS5, BBS6, or BBS8 leads to different rates of reti…
Structure-Based Discovery of Small Molecules Binding to RNA
2017
Ribonucleic acids (RNAs) constitute attractive drug targets. The wealth of structural information about RNAs is steadily increasing making it possible to use this information for the design of new ligands. Two methods that make heavy use of structural knowledge for ligand discovery are molecular docking and fragment screening. In molecular docking the structure of the binding site is used as a template for the design of new ligands using computational methods whereas in fragment screening biophysical methods are used for the detection of weak binding ligands which are subsequently elaborated into tighter binding molecules. In this chapter, we give an overview of both methods in the context …
SPEN haploinsufficiency causes a neurodevelopmental disorder overlapping proximal 1p36 deletion syndrome with an episignature of X chromosomes in fem…
2021
Contains fulltext : 231702.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Deletion 1p36 (del1p36) syndrome is the most common human disorder resulting from a terminal autosomal deletion. This condition is molecularly and clinically heterogeneous. Deletions involving two non-overlapping regions, known as the distal (telomeric) and proximal (centromeric) critical regions, are sufficient to cause the majority of the recurrent clinical features, although with different facial features and dysmorphisms. SPEN encodes a transcriptional repressor commonly deleted in proximal del1p36 syndrome and is located centromeric to the proximal 1p36 critical region. Here, we used clinical data from 34 individuals…