A 3 base pair deletion in TBX1 leads to reduced protein expression and transcriptional activity

Effects of a proteasome inhibitor on the riboflavin production in Ashbya gossypii

AIMS

Effects of a proteasome inhibitor, MG-132, on the riboflavin production in Ashbya gossypii were investigated to elucidate the relationship of the riboflavin production with flavoprotein homeostasis.

METHODS AND RESULTS

The addition of MG-132 to the liquid medium reduced the specific riboflavin production by 79% in A. gossypii at 25 μM after 24 h. The addition of the inhibitor also caused the accumulation of reactive oxygen species and ubiquitinated proteins. These results indicated that MG-132 works in A. gossypii without any genetic engineering and reduces riboflavin production. In the presence of 25 μM MG-132, specific NADH dehydrogenase activity was increased by 1.4-fold compared to DMSO, but specific succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) activity was decreased to 52% compared to DMSO. Additionally, the amount of AgSdh1p (ACR052Wp) was also reduced. Specific riboflavin production was reduced to 22% when 20 mM malonate, a SDH inhibitor, was added to the culture medium. The riboflavin production in heterozygous AgSDH1 gene-disrupted mutant (AgSDH1^-/+ ) was reduced to 63% compared to that in wild type.

CONCLUSIONS

MG-132 suppresses the riboflavin production and SDH activity in A. gossypii. SDH is one of the flavoproteins involved in the riboflavin production in A. gossypii.

SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY

This study shows that MG-132 has a negative influence on the riboflavin production and SDH activity in A. gossypii and leads to the elucidation of the connection of the riboflavin production with flavoproteins.

A loss-of-function mutation p.T52S in RIPPLY3 is a potential predisposing genetic risk factor for Chinese Han conotruncal heart defect patients without the 22q11.2 deletion/duplication

Background

Conotruncal heart defect (CTD) is a complex congenital heart disease with a complex and poorly understood etiology. The transcriptional corepressor RIPPLY3 plays a pivotal role in heart development as a negative regulator of the key cardiac transcription factor TBX1. A previous study showed that RIPPLY3 contribute to cardiac outflow tract development in mice, however, the relationship between RIPPLY3 and human cardiac malformation has not been reported.

Methods

615 unrelated CTD Chinese Han patients were enrolled, we excluded the 22q11.2 deletion/duplication using a modified multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification method—CNVplex^®, and investigated the variants of RIPPLY3 in 577 patients without the 22q11.2 deletion/duplication by target sequencing. Functional assays were performed to testify the potential pathogenicity of nonsynonymous variants found in these CTD patients.

Results

Four rare heterozygous nonsynonymous variants (p.P30L, p.T52S, p.D113N and p.V179D) were identified in four CTD patients, the variant NM_018962.2:c.155C>G (p.T52S) is referred as rs745539198, and the variant NM_018962.2:c.337G>A (p.D113N) is referred as rs747419773. However, variants p.P30L and p.V179D were not found in multiple online human gene variation databases. Western blot analysis and immunofluorescence showed that there were no significant difference between wild type RIPPLY3 and these four variants. Luciferase assays revealed that the p.T52S variant altered the inhibition of TBX1 transcriptional activity in vitro, and co-immunoprecipitation assays showed that the p.T52S variant reduced the physical interaction of RIPPLY3 with TBX1. In addition to the results from pathogenicity prediction tools and evolutionary protein conservation, the p.T52S variant was thought to be a potentially deleterious variant.

Conclusion

Our results provide evidence that deleterious variants in RIPPLY3 are potential molecular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of human CTD.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12967-018-1633-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.