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Projekt Druckansicht

Identification of novel and disease-related VCP/p97 binding partners and effects of disease-causing VCP/p97 mutations on protein interactions and protein quality control systems in Dictyostelium and mouse

Fachliche Zuordnung Molekulare und zelluläre Neurologie und Neuropathologie
Förderung Förderung von 2009 bis 2018
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 101925924
 
Erstellungsjahr 2017

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

In our project we analyzed aspects of the complex molecular pathophysiology of VCP/p97-related myofibrillar myopathies employing a broad spectrum of experimental techniques in vitro and in cell as well as Dictyostelium, zebrafish and mouse models. VCP/p97 is a very abundant and evolutionarily highly conserved member of the triple-A ATPase family involved in a plethora of cellular processes such as membrane dynamics, protein quality control, cell cycle, apoptosis, and DNA damage response. More than 40 different disease-causing missense mutations of VCP/p97 have been described in human, which cause neurodegenerative disorders, e.g. IBMPFD, ALS and HSP. Our search for novel and disease-relevant VCP/p97 binding partners resulted in the identification of strumpellin. In human, missense mutations of strumpellin also cause a form of HSP. Moreover, our genetic analysis of a cohort of 43 ALS-FTD patients for mutations in VCP/p97, strumpellin, WASH1, FAM21C, CCDC53, SWIP, CapZα, and CapZβ uncovered one patient with a putatively pathogenic heterozygous CAPZA1 variant. Thus, mutant forms of VCP/p97 or WASH complex subunits may have a concerted pathogenic role in various human neurodgenerative diseases. Another focus of our work was on the functional consequences of point mutated VCP/p97 in mouse, zebrafish and Dictyostelium with special emphasis on autophagy and proteasome activity. In our VCP/p97 haploinsufficient mouse model the reduced amount of VCP/p97 protein caused a decrease in proteasomal activity in conjunction with an increase in ubiquitinated proteins. Still ongoing work on our R155C VCP/p97 knock-in mouse strain focuses on the analysis of the consequences of the expression of R155C VCP/p97 in heterozygous animals. Thus far, we could not detect any alterations, which mirror the human disease phenotype, however, we will further investigate unexpected alterations which have not been linked to IBMPFD, ALS, or HSP. Furthermore, we identified another novel direct VCP/p97 interaction partner, the endogenous proteasome inhibitor PSMF1/PI31. This led to novel insights into the basic regulation of proteasomal activity and we anticipate that our findings may have substantial implications for the molecular understanding of ageing and human diseases. In Dictyostelium, the induction of dominant-negative changes through expression of mutant VCP/p97 revealed another novel mode of VCP/p97 interaction. The results imply that VCP/p97 and the core autophagy protein ATG9 mutually inhibit each other. As a further protein-protein interaction, we analyzed the interaction of VCP/p97 with UBXD9 and demonstrated that both human and Dictyostelium UBXD9 proteins very efficiently could disassemble wild-type, but to a lesser extent mutant VCP/p97 hexamers into monomers. We hypothesize that the various biochemical differences caused by VCP/p97 point mutations which we uncovered in the course of our project could be responsible for the human VCP-related disease pathology in the long-term.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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