Analysis of biological networks in the endothelium with biomimetic microsystem platform
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY-LUNG CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR PHYSIOLOGY
Authors: Kruse, Kevin; Klomp, Jeff; Sun, Mitchell; Chen, Zhang; Santana, Dianicha; Huang, Fei; Kanabar, Pinal; Maienschein-Cline, Mark; Komarova, Yulia A.
Abstract
Here we describe a novel method for studying the protein "interactome" in primary human cells and apply this method to investigate the effect of posttranslational protein modifications (PTMs) on the protein's functions. We created a novel "biomimetic microsystem platform" (Bio-MSP) to isolate the protein complexes in primary cells by covalently attaching purified His-tagged proteins to a solid microscale support. Using this Bio-MSP, we have analyzed the interactomes of unphosphorylated and phosphomimetic end-binding protein-3 (EB3) in endothelial cells. Pathway analysis of these interactomes demonstrated the novel role of EB3 phosphorylation at serine 162 in regulating the protein's function. We showed that phosphorylation "switches" the EB3 biological network to modulate cellular processes such as cell-to-cell adhesion whereas dephosphorylation of this site promotes cell proliferation. This novel technique provides a useful tool to study the role of PTMs or single point mutations in activating distinct signal transduction networks and thereby the biological function of the protein in health and disease.
Subdomain cryo-EM structure of nodaviral replication protein A crown complex provides mechanistic insights into RNA genome replication
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Authors: Unchwaniwala, Nuruddin; Zhan, Hong; Pennington, Janice; Horswill, Mark; den Boon, Johan A.; Ahlquist, Paul
Abstract
For positive-strand RNA [(+)RNA] viruses, the major target for antiviral therapies is genomic RNA replication, which occurs at poorly understood membrane-bound viral RNA replication complexes. Recent cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) of nodavirus RNA replication complexes revealed that the viral double-stranded RNA replication template is coiled inside a 30- to 90-nm invagination of the outer mitochondrial membrane, whose necked aperture to the cytoplasm is gated by a 12-fold symmetric, 35-nm diameter "crown" complex that contains multifunctional viral RNA replication protein A. Here we report optimizing cryo-EM tomography and image processing to improve crown resolution from 33 to 8.5 angstrom. This resolves the crown into 12 distinct vertical segments, each with 3 major subdomains: A membrane-connected basal lobe and an apical lobe that together comprise the similar to 19-nm-diameter central turret, and a leg emerging from the basal lobe that connects to the membrane at similar to 35-nm diameter. Despite widely varying replication vesicle diameters, the resulting two rings of membrane interaction sites constrain the vesicle neck to a highly uniform shape. Labeling protein A with a His-tag that binds 5-nm Ni-nanogold allowed cryo-EM tomography mapping of the C terminus of protein A to the apical lobe, which correlates well with the predicted structure of the C-proximal polymerase domain of protein A. These and other results indicate that the crown contains 12 copies of protein A arranged basally to apically in an N-to-C orientation. Moreover, the apical polymerase localization has significant mechanistic implications for template RNA recruitment and (-) and (+)RNA synthesis.