Heat shock proteins bind calcitonin

Cytoplasmic Shotgun Proteomic Points to Key Proteins and Pathways in Temozolomide-Resistant Glioblastoma Multiforme

Temozolomide (TMZ) is the first line of chemotherapy to treat primary brain tumors of the type glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). TMZ resistance (TMZR) is one of the main barriers to successful treatment and is a principal factor in relapse, resulting in a poor median survival of 15 months. The present paper focuses on proteomic analyses of cytosolic fractions from TMZ-resistant (TMZR) LN-18 cells. The experimental workflow includes an easy, cost-effective, and reproducible method to isolate subcellular fraction of cytosolic (CYTO) proteins, mitochondria, and plasma membrane proteins for proteomic studies. For this study, enriched cytoplasmic fractions were analyzed in replicates by nanoflow liquid chromatography tandem high-resolution mass spectrometry (nLC-MS/MS), and proteins identified were quantified using a label-free approach (LFQ). Statistical analysis of control (CTRL) and temozolomide-resistant (TMZR) proteomes revealed proteins that appear to be differentially controlled in the cytoplasm. The functions of these proteins are discussed as well as their roles in other cancers and TMZ resistance in GBM. Key proteins are also described through biological processes related to gene ontology (GO), molecular functions, and cellular components. For protein-protein interactions (PPI), network and pathway involvement analyses have been performed, highlighting the roles of key proteins in the TMZ resistance phenotypes. This study provides a detailed insight into methods of subcellular fractionation for proteomic analysis of TMZ-resistant GBM cells and the potential to apply this approach to future large-scale studies. Several key proteins, protein-protein interactions (PPI), and pathways have been identified, underlying the TMZ resistance phenotype and highlighting the proteins' biological functions.

Differentially Expressed Genes Regulating Glutathione Metabolism, Protein-Folding, and Unfolded Protein Response in Pancreatic β-Cells in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Impaired redox homeostasis in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) may contribute to proinsulin misfolding and thus to activate the unfolded protein response (UPR) and apoptotic pathways, culminating in pancreatic β-cell loss and type 2 diabetes (T2D). The present study was designed to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) encoding enzymes for glutathione metabolism and their impact on the expression levels of genes regulating protein folding and UPR in β-cells of T2D patients. The GEO transcriptome datasets of β-cells of diabetics and non-diabetics, GSE20966 and GSE81608, were analyzed for 142 genes of interest using limma and GREIN software, respectively. Diabetic β-cells showed dataset-specific patterns of DEGs (FDR ≤ 0.05) implicated in the regulation of glutathione metabolism (ANPEP, PGD, IDH2, and CTH), protein-folding (HSP90AB1, HSP90AA1, HSPA1B, HSPA8, BAG3, NDC1, NUP160, RLN1, and RPS19BP1), and unfolded protein response (CREB3L4, ERP27, and BID). The GCLC gene, encoding the catalytic subunit of glutamate-cysteine ligase, the first rate-limiting enzyme of glutathione biosynthesis, was moderately down-regulated in diabetic β-cells from both datasets (p ≤ 0.05). Regression analysis established that genes involved in the de novo synthesis of glutathione, GCLC, GCLM, and GSS affect the expression levels of genes encoding molecular chaperones and those involved in the UPR pathway. This study showed for the first time that diabetic β-cells exhibit alterations in the expression of genes regulating glutathione metabolism, protein-folding, and UPR and provided evidence for the molecular crosstalk between impaired redox homeostasis and abnormal protein folding, underlying ER stress in type 2 diabetes.

EspF of Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli Enhances Apoptosis via Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in Intestinal Epithelial Cells: An Isobaric Tags for Relative and Absolute Quantitation-Based Comparative Proteomic Analysis

There have been large foodborne outbreaks related to Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) around the world. Among its virulence proteins, the EspF encoded by locus of enterocyte effacement is one of the most known functional effector proteins. In this research, we infected the HT-29 cells with the EHEC wild type strain and EspF-deficient EHEC strain. Via the emerging technique isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ), we explored the pathogenic characteristics of EspF within host cells. Our data showed that the differences regarding cellular responses mainly contained immune regulation, protein synthesis, signal transduction, cellular assembly and organization, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, and apoptosis. Notably, compared with the EspF-deficient strain, the protein processing in the ER and ribosome were upregulated during wild type (WT) infection. Our findings proved that the EspF of Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli induced ER stress in intestinal epithelial cells; the ER stress-dependent apoptosis pathway was also activated within the host cells. This study provides insight into the virulence mechanism of protein EspF, which will deepen our general understanding of A/E pathogens and their interaction with host proteins.

Genome-Wide Identification of Hsp70 Genes in the Large Yellow Croaker (Larimichthys crocea) and Their Regulated Expression Under Cold and Heat Stress

Heat shock proteins 70 (Hsp70) are required for key cellular processes and responses to environmental changes, however, there are an unknown number of hsp70 gene family members in the large yellow croaker (Larimichthys crocea). In the present study, 17 hsp70 genes were identified through the genome of the large yellow croaker. These genes are divided into seven evolutionarily distinct groups according to a phylogenetic tree. The orthologs of these hsp70 genes were found in humans and zebrafish. The expression patterns of the hsp70 gene family in the large yellow croaker under cold and heat stress were studied by examining transcriptome data. Six out of 17 genes were significantly unregulated or downregulated after cold or heat stress. There were two genes significantly upregulated and two genes downregulated in the liver after cold treatment, while after heat treatment, five genes were significantly upregulated, and no genes were significantly downregulated. Three expression patterns were detected: strictly heat-inducible hsp70, constitutively expressed and moderately heat-inducible hsp70, and constitutively expressed and less stress-dependent hsp70 genes. All the findings will contribute to a better understanding of the biological function of hsp70s in defending against thermal challenges.

Generation of human ER chaperone BiP in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

BACKGROUND

Human BiP is traditionally regarded as a major endoplasmic reticulum (ER) chaperone performing a number of well-described functions in the ER. In recent years it was well established that this molecule can also be located in other cell organelles and compartments, on the cell surface or be secreted. Also novel functions were assigned to this protein. Importantly, BiP protein appears to be involved in cancer and rheumatoid arthritis progression, autoimmune inflammation and tissue damage, and thus could potentially be used for therapeutic purposes. In addition, a growing body of evidence indicates BiP as a new therapeutic target for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Increasing importance of this protein and its involvement in critical human diseases demands new source of high quality native recombinant human BiP for further studies and potential application. Here we introduce yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a host for the generation of human BiP protein.

RESULTS

Expression of a full-length human BiP precursor in S. cerevisiae resulted in a high-level secretion of mature recombinant protein into the culture medium. The newly discovered ability of the yeast cells to recognize, correctly process the native signal sequence of human BiP and secrete this protein into the growth media allowed simple one-step purification of highly pure recombinant BiP protein with yields reaching 10 mg/L. Data presented in this study shows that secreted recombinant human BiP possesses native amino acid sequence and structural integrity, is biologically active and without yeast-derived modifications. Strikingly, ATPase activity of yeast-derived human BiP protein exceeded the activity of E. coli-derived recombinant human BiP by a 3-fold.

CONCLUSIONS

S. cerevisiae is able to correctly process and secrete human BiP protein. Consequently, resulting recombinant BiP protein corresponds accurately to native analogue. The ability to produce large quantities of native recombinant human BiP in yeast expression system should accelerate the analysis and application of this important protein.

Proteogenomic analysis of human chromosome 9-encoded genes from human samples and lung cancer tissues

The Chromosome-centric Human Proteome Project (C-HPP) was recently initiated as an international collaborative effort. Our team adopted chromosome 9 (Chr 9) and performed a bioinformatics and proteogenomic analysis to catalog Chr 9-encoded proteins from normal tissues, lung cancer cell lines, and lung cancer tissues. Approximately 74.7% of the Chr 9 genes of the human genome were identified, which included approximately 28% of missing proteins (46 of 162) on Chr 9 compared with the list of missing proteins from the neXtProt Master Table (2013-09). In addition, we performed a comparative proteomics analysis between normal lung and lung cancer tissues. On the basis of the data analysis, 15 proteins from Chr 9 were detected only in lung cancer tissues. Finally, we conducted a proteogenomic analysis to discover Chr 9-residing single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and mutations described in the COSMIC cancer mutation database. We identified 21 SNPs and four mutations containing peptides on Chr 9 from normal human cells/tissues and lung cancer cell lines, respectively. In summary, this study provides valuable information of the human proteome for the scientific community as part of C-HPP. The mass spectrometry proteomics data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium with the data set identifier PXD000603.

Modulation of calcitonin binding by calcium: differential effects of divalent cations

Binding of salmon calcitonin to bovine hypothalamic membranes is enhanced about 25% by calcium with a half-maximal effect at 15 mM calcium. In contrast, membranes prepared from a cell line expressing a recombinant human calcitonin receptor show no effect of calcium under similar conditions. The hypothalamic calcitonin receptor solubilized with CHAPS detergent retains an apparent Kd of 0.3 nM for salmon calcitonin; however, binding of calcitonin to the detergent-solubilized receptor complex can be inhibited by divalent cations in order of potency Mn > Ca approximately Sr approximately Mg >> NaCl with Mn and Ca having apparent Ki's of 5 mM and 20 mM respectively. Dixon and Scatchard plots of Mn and Ca inhibition of binding to the soluble receptor complex suggest a noncompetitive mechanism of inhibition. Calcium also inhibits calcitonin binding to a detergent-solubilized recombinant human calcitonin receptor. Inhibition of calcitonin binding is observed using two independent methods for determining soluble receptor-hormone complex and inhibition is reversed by EDTA.

Reversible calcitonin binding to solubilized sheep brain binding sites

In this study we have solubilized and characterized binding sites for calcitonin (CT) from sheep brainstem. Autoradiography of 125I-labelled salmon CT (125I-sCT) binding to sheep diencephalon revealed a similar pattern of binding to that seen in other species, although the extent of distribution was greater in the sheep. CT binding activity could be extracted from membranes with either CHAPS or digitonin, but not with beta-octyl glucoside, 125I-sCT binding was saturable, with a dissociation constant for CHAPS-solubilized membranes of 2.8 +/- 0.5 nM and a maximum binding site concentration of 6.2 +/- 1.6 pmol/mg of protein. In competition binding studies, various CTs and their analogues demonstrated a similar rank order of potency to that seen in other CT receptor systems, Optimal binding occurred in the pH range 6.5-7.5, and was decreased in the presence of NaCl concentrations greater than 200 mM. In contrast with most other CT receptor binding systems, in which binding is poorly reversible, the binding of 125I-sCT to sheep brain binding sites underwent substantial dissociation upon addition of excess unlabelled sCT, with 40% and 46% dissociation after 2 h at 4 degree C in particulate and solubilized membranes respectively. Photoaffinity labelling of the binding site with the biologically active analogue 125I-[Arg11,18,4-azidobenzoyl-Lys14]sCT and analysis on SDS/PAGE under reducing conditions revealed a specific protein band of Mr approximately solubilized and particulate brain membranes. This is in accordance with the molecular size of CT receptors in other tissues where two species of receptor have been identified. one of Mr approximately 71,000 and another of Mr approximately 88,000. These results demonstrate the presence of high concentrations of CT binding sites in sheep brain which display different kinetic properties to those of CT receptors found in other tissues.