News | IMPRS for Molecules of Life

Publication of IMPRS-LS student Georgia Balsevich

Publication Placeholder

Balsevich, G., Hausl, A.S., Meyer, C.W., Karamihalev, S., Feng, X., Pohlmann, M.L., Dournes, C., Uribe-Marino, A., Santarelli, S., Labermaier, C., Hafner, K., Mao, T., Breitsamer, M., Theodoropoulou, M., Namendorf, C., Uhr, M., Paez-Pereda, M., Winter, G., Hausch, F., Chen, A., Tschop, M.H., Rein, T., Gassen, N.C., and Schmidt, M.V.
Nat Commun, 2017, 8, 1725.

Stress-responsive FKBP51 regulates AKT2-AS160 signaling and metabolic function.

The co-chaperone FKBP5 is a stress-responsive protein-regulating stress reactivity, and its genetic variants are associated with T2D related traits and other stress-related disorders. Here we show that FKBP51 plays a role in energy and glucose homeostasis. Fkbp5 knockout (51KO) mice are protected from high-fat diet-induced weight gain, show improved glucose tolerance and increased insulin signaling in skeletal muscle. Chronic treatment with a novel FKBP51 antagonist, SAFit2, recapitulates the effects of FKBP51 deletion on both body weight regulation and glucose tolerance. Using shorter SAFit2 treatment, we show that glucose tolerance improvement precedes the reduction in body weight. Mechanistically, we identify a novel association between FKBP51 and AS160, a substrate of AKT2 that is involved in glucose uptake. FKBP51 antagonism increases the phosphorylation of AS160, increases glucose transporter 4 expression at the plasma membrane, and ultimately enhances glucose uptake in skeletal myotubes. We propose FKBP51 as a mediator between stress and T2D development, and potential target for therapeutic approaches.

Publication of IMPRS-LS student Vladimir Thoma

Publication Placeholder

Thoma V., Kobayashi K. and Tanimoto H.
eNeuro 4, 2017

The Role of the Gustatory System in the Coordination of Feeding

To survive, all animals must find, inspect and ingest food. Behavioral coordination and control of feeding is therefore a challenge that animals must face. Here, we focus on how the gustatory system guides the precise execution of behavioral sequences that promote ingestion and suppresses competing behaviors. We summarize principles learnt from Drosophila, where underlying sensory neuronal mechanisms are illustrated in great detail. Moreover, we compare these principles with findings in other animals, where such coordination plays prominent roles. These examples suggest that the use of gustatory information for feeding coordination has an ancient origin and is prevalent throughout the animal kingdom.

Proteome of the human heart mapped for the first time

Atlas of the Heart - A healthy heart beats about two billion times during a lifetime – thanks to the interplay of more than 10,000 proteins. Researcher from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) and the German Heart Centre at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now determined which and how many individual proteins are present in each type of cell that occurs in the heart. In doing so, they compiled the first atlas of the healthy human heart, known as the cardiac proteome. The atlas will make it easier to identify differences between healthy and diseased hearts in future.

Proteins are the molecular machines of cells, in which they perform a range of functions. They are produced by the cells based on blueprints stored in their DNA. Changes occurring at the DNA or protein level can lead to disorders. For such changes to be recognized as underlying causes of heart disease, it is important to know precisely which proteins are present in the healthy heart and in what quantities.

Protein map of the heart
The first such protein atlas of the heart was recently published in Nature Communications by a research team from Munich. The scientists determined the protein profile of cells in all the regions of the heart, such as heart valves, cardiac chambers and major blood vessels. In addition, they investigated the protein composition in three different cell types of the heart: the cardiac fibroblasts, the smooth muscle cells and the endothelial cells. In this way the researchers were able to map the distribution of proteins in the various regions of the heart. Using mass spectrometry, they identified nearly 11,000 different proteins throughout the heart.

Previous studies had focussed for the most part only on individual cell types, or they used tissue from diseased hearts. "This approach has two problems," says Sophia Doll of the MPIB and lead author of the study. "First, the results did not give a full picture of the heart across all its regions and tissues; and second, comparative data on healthy hearts were often missing. Our study has eliminated both problems. Now the data can be used as a reference for future studies."

"Looking at the protein atlas of the human heart, you can see that all healthy hearts work in a very similar manner. We measured similar protein compositions in all the regions with few differences between them," says Sophia Doll. We were also surprised to find that the right and left halves of the heart are similar, despite having quite different functions: the right half pumps oxygen-poor blood to the lungs, while the left half pumps oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to the body.

Publication of IMPRS-LS student Jeongyoon Choi

Publication Placeholder

Choi J, Bachmann AL, Tauscher K, Benda C, Fierz B, Müller J.
Nat Struct Mol Biol, 2017, [Epub ahead of print].
doi: 10.1038/nsmb.3488

DNA binding by PHF1 prolongs PRC2 residence time on chromatin and thereby promotes H3K27 methylation.

Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) trimethylates histone H3 at lysine 27 to mark genes for repression. We measured the dynamics of PRC2 binding on recombinant chromatin and free DNA at the single-molecule level using total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy. PRC2 preferentially binds free DNA with multisecond residence time and midnanomolar affinity. PHF1, a PRC2 accessory protein of the Polycomblike family, extends PRC2 residence time on DNA and chromatin. Crystallographic and functional studies reveal that Polycomblike proteins contain a winged-helix domain that binds DNA in a sequence-nonspecific fashion. DNA binding by this winged-helix domain accounts for the prolonged residence time of PHF1-PRC2 on chromatin and makes it a more efficient H3K27 methyltranferase than PRC2 alone. Together, these studies establish that interactions with DNA provide the predominant binding affinity of PRC2 for chromatin. Moreover, they reveal the molecular basis for how Polycomblike proteins stabilize PRC2 on chromatin and stimulate its activity.

Publication of IMPRS-LS student Elisabeth Karg

Publication Placeholder

Karg E, Smets M, Ryan J, Forné I, Qin W, Mulholland CB, Kalideris G, Imhof A, Bultmann S, Leonhardt H.
J Mol Biol, 2017, [Epub ahead of print].
doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2017.10.014

Ubiquitome analysis reveals PCNA-associated factor 15 (PAF15) as a specific ubiquitination target of UHRF1 in embryonic stem cells.

Ubiquitination is a multifunctional posttranslational modification controlling the activity, subcellular localization and stability of proteins. The E3 ubiquitin ligase UHRF1 is an essential epigenetic factor that recognizes repressive histone marks as well as hemi-methylated DNA and recruits DNMT1. To explore enzymatic functions of UHRF1 beyond epigenetic regulation we conducted a comprehensive screen in mouse embryonic stem cells to identify novel ubiquitination targets of UHRF1 and its paralogue UHRF2. We found differentially ubiquitinated peptides associated with a variety of biological processes such as transcriptional regulation and DNA damage response. Most prominently, we identified PCNA-associated factor 15 (PAF15, also known as Pclaf, Ns5atp9, KIAA0101 and OEATC-1) as a specific ubiquitination target of UHRF1. Although the function of PAF15 ubiquitination in translesion DNA synthesis (TLS) is well characterized, the respective E3 ligase had been unknown. We could show that UHRF1 ubiquitinates PAF15 at Lys 15 and Lys 24 and promotes its binding to PCNA during late S-phase. In summary, we identified novel ubiquitination targets that link UHRF1 to transcriptional regulation and DNA damage response.

Cellular power outage

A common feature of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or Huntington's disease are deposits of aggregated proteins in the patient's cells that cause damage to cellular functions. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich report that, even in normal cells, aberrant aggregation-prone proteins are continually produced due to partial failure of the respiratory system. Unless they are removed by degradation, aggregates accumulate preferentially in the mitochondria, the cellular power plants, ultimately blocking energy production. In order to get rid of these toxic aggregates, cells have developed an elaborate protein quality control system.

Misfolded proteins made from defective blueprints are often sticky and clump together. Accumulation of such faulty proteins is known to contribute to the progression of several diseases. Therefore, cells have internal quality control mechanisms that detect and rapidly destroy faulty proteins. Proteins are produced by ribosomes, and misfolding can occur if they stall while decoding a damaged template. If the necessary ribosome-associated quality control machinery (RQC) does not function properly, defective proteins accumulate and form toxic aggregates in the cytoplasm of the cells. A previous study reported that this aggregation mechanism is mediated by so-called CAT-tails – C-terminal alanine-threonine sequences that are added to the defective proteins. So far, studies have focused on how the RQC recognizes and clears blocked ribosomes in the cytosol. The collaborating groups at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and the university have now investigated the clearance of ribosome-blocked proteins destined for the mitochondria.

Publication of IMPRS-LS student Philipp Geyer

Publication Placeholder

Geyer PE, Holdt LM, Teupser D, Mann M.
Mol Syst Biol 2017, 13, 942.
doi: 10.15252/msb.20156297

Revisiting biomarker discovery by plasma proteomics.

Clinical analysis of blood is the most widespread diagnostic procedure in medicine, and blood biomarkers are used to categorize patients and to support treatment decisions. However, existing biomarkers are far from comprehensive and often lack specificity and new ones are being developed at a very slow rate. As described in this review, mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics has become a powerful technology in biological research and it is now poised to allow the characterization of the plasma proteome in great depth. Previous "triangular strategies" aimed at discovering single biomarker candidates in small cohorts, followed by classical immunoassays in much larger validation cohorts. We propose a "rectangular" plasma proteome profiling strategy, in which the proteome patterns of large cohorts are correlated with their phenotypes in health and disease. Translating such concepts into clinical practice will require restructuring several aspects of diagnostic decision-making, and we discuss some first steps in this direction.

Publication of IMPRS-LS student Džana Pašalić

Publication Placeholder

Pasalic D, Weber B, Giannone C, Anelli T, Müller R, Fagioli C, Felkl M, John C, Mossuto MF, Becker CFW, Sitia R, Buchner J.
Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2017, [Epub ahead of print].
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1701797114

A peptide extension dictates IgM assembly.

Professional secretory cells can produce large amounts of high-quality complex molecules, including IgM antibodies. Owing to their multivalency, polymeric IgM antibodies provide an efficient first-line of defense against pathogens. To decipher the mechanisms of IgM assembly, we investigated its biosynthesis in living cells and faithfully reconstituted the underlying processes in vitro. We find that a conserved peptide extension at the C-terminal end of the IgM heavy (Ig-μ) chains, termed the tailpiece, is necessary and sufficient to establish the correct geometry. Alanine scanning revealed that hydrophobic amino acids in the first half of the tailpiece contain essential information for generating the correct topology. Assembly is triggered by the formation of a disulfide bond linking two tailpieces. This induces conformational changes in the tailpiece and the adjacent domain, which drive further polymerization. Thus, the biogenesis of large and topologically challenging IgM complexes is dictated by a local conformational switch in a peptide extension.

Publication of IMPRS-LS students Liang Li and Mahesh Lingaraju

Publication Placeholder

Li L, Lingaraju M, Basquin C, Basquin J, Conti E
RNA 2017, 23, 1028-1034.
doi: 10.1261/rna.061200.117

Structure of a SMG8-SMG9 complex identifies a G-domain heterodimer in the NMD effector proteins.

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is a eukaryotic mRNA degradation pathway involved in surveillance and post-transcriptional regulation, and executed by the concerted action of several trans-acting factors. The SMG1 kinase is an essential NMD factor in metazoans and is associated with two recently identified and yet poorly characterized proteins, SMG8 and SMG9. We determined the 2.5 Å resolution crystal structure of a SMG8-SMG9 core complex from C. elegans We found that SMG8-SMG9 is a G-domain heterodimer with architectural similarities to the dynamin-like family of GTPases such as Atlastin and GBP1. The SMG8-SMG9 heterodimer forms in the absence of nucleotides, with interactions conserved from worms to humans. Nucleotide binding occurs at the G domain of SMG9 but not of SMG8. Fitting the GDP-bound SMG8-SMG9 structure in EM densities of the human SMG1-SMG8-SMG9 complex raises the possibility that the nucleotide site of SMG9 faces SMG1 and could impact the kinase conformation and/or regulation.

Publication of IMPRS-LS student Julia Varga

Publication Placeholder

Varga J & Greten FR
Nat Cell Biol, 2017, [Epub ahead of print].
doi: 10.1038/ncb3611

Cell plasticity in epithelial homeostasis and tumorigenesis

The adult organism is characterized by remarkable plasticity, which enables efficient regeneration and restoration of homeostasis after damage. When aberrantly activated, this plasticity contributes to tumour initiation and progression. Here we review recent advances in this field with a focus on cell fate changes and the epithelial-mesenchymal transition-two distinct, yet closely related, forms of plasticity with fundamental roles in homeostasis and cancer.