Review
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Edwin Jarratt-Barnham, Limin Wang, Youzheng Ning, Julia M. Davies
Summary: Plant CNGCs are tetrameric cation channels activated by cNMPs like cAMP and cGMP. Arabidopsis thaliana encodes 20 CNGC subunits involved in development, stress response, and immunity. Recent findings show that CNGC subunits form heterotetrameric complexes with distinct behavior, affecting signaling pathways.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Plant Sciences
Alexander H. Howell, Carsten Voelkner, Patrick McGreevy, Kaare H. Jensen, Rainer Waadt, Simon Gilroy, Hans-Henning Kunz, Winfried S. Peters, Michael Knoblauch
Summary: The micro-cantilever technique applied to individual leaf epidermis cells of Arabidopsis thaliana and Nicotiana tabacum revealed that compressive forces induced local calcium peaks followed by slowly moving calcium waves. Releasing the force triggered significantly faster calcium waves. Different wave characteristics suggest distinct mechanisms and the ability of plants to distinguish touch signals from release signals.
Article
Plant Sciences
Soeui Lee, Hye-Young Lee, Hui Jeong Kang, Ye-Eun Seo, Joo Hyun Lee, Doil Choi
Summary: Transient and rapid increase in cytosolic Ca2+ is crucial for plant defense against pathogens. This study reveals that cyclic nucleotide-gated channels (CNGCs) play a key role in mediating Ca2+ influx during this process, and AVRblb2 interacts with CNGCs via calmodulin and calmodulin-like proteins. Moreover, Avrblb2 inhibits calcium channel activation by preventing the release of calmodulin and calmodulin-like proteins. The formation of active heteromeric channels with other CNGCs allows fine-tuning of cytosolic Ca2+ level for appropriate responses to diverse signals.
Review
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Arantza Muguruza-Montero, Rafael Ramis, Eider Nunez, Oscar R. Ballesteros, Markel G. Ibarluzea, Ariane Araujo, Sara M-Alicante, Janire Urrutia, Aritz Leonardo, Aitor Bergara, Alvaro Villarroel
Summary: Most calmodulin targets are alpha-helical, but it is unknown if this structure is induced or chosen spontaneously. There is a wide variety of calmodulin targets aside from alpha helix propensity, with the exception of the common IQ site found in certain targets. The isolated SK2 target adopts a pre-folded core region that becomes fully alpha-helical when binding to calmodulin, suggesting the occurrence of capping within calmodulin targets.
Article
Pharmacology & Pharmacy
Thilo Henss, Jatin Nagpal, Shiqiang Gao, Ulrike Scheib, Alessia Pieragnolo, Alexander Hirschhaeuser, Franziska Schneider-Warme, Peter Hegemann, Georg Nagel, Alexander Gottschalk
Summary: The study developed a comprehensive suite of optogenetic tools for manipulating cyclic nucleotides in various cell types, including sensory neurons, for effective depolarization.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY
(2022)
Review
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Kristyna Vydra Bousova, Monika Zouharova, Katerina Jiraskova, Veronika Vetyskova
Summary: This article focuses on the interaction between TRPM channels and CaM, and summarizes the effects of CaM interactions and modulations on TRPM channels in cellular physiology.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Junheng Zhao, Song Peng, Hongtu Cui, Panyu Li, Tianming Li, Luole Liu, Hanfeng Zhang, Zengyuan Tian, Haihong Shang, Ruqiang Xu
Summary: This study comprehensively identified and characterized CNGCs in cotton, revealing their expression patterns, regulatory mechanisms, and functional diversity. The findings lay the foundation for further research and utilization of CNGCs in cotton genetic improvement.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Cell Biology
Seok Choi, Hyunhyo Seo, Kyungmin Lee, Dong Hoon Shin, Mei Jin Wu, Wenhao Wu, Xingyou Huang, Jingwei Zhang, Chansik Hong, Jae Yeoul Jun
Summary: The study revealed the presence of HCN channels in colonic ICC and their involvement in generating pacemaking potentials, suggesting that HCN channels could be therapeutic targets for disturbed colonic motility disorders.
JOURNAL OF CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Cell Biology
Faten Abdelli, Karim Jellali, Estefania Anguita, Maria Gonzalez-Munoz, Eduardo Villalobo, Ivan Madronal, Juan Alcalde, Mamdouh Ben Ali, Jihene Elloumi-Mseddi, Ikram Jemel, Francesc Tebar, Carlos Enrich, Sami Aifa, Antonio Villalobo
Summary: The study shows that EGFR with CaM-BD and CaM-LD domains affects the receptor's TK activity. Different EGFR mutants exhibit varying abilities to bind EGF, localize to the plasma membrane, and undergo ligand-dependent internalization.
JOURNAL OF CELLULAR PHYSIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Gioele Capillo, Eugenia R. Lauriano, Jose M. Icardo, Prabhugouda Siriyappagouder, Michal Kuciel, Stelios Karapanagiotis, Giacomo Zaccone, Jorge M. O. Fernandes
Summary: HCN channels are proteins that regulate cardiac pacemaker activity and synaptic transmission. Research on the pacemaker system in the heart of wild Atlantic cod revealed the potential role of intracardiac neurons in modulating pacemaking.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Danton H. O'Day
Summary: Calcium dysregulation is an early potential factor in the development of neurodegenerative diseases. Calmodulin, a small sensor and effector protein, plays a crucial role in binding to and regulating numerous calmodulin binding proteins in response to calcium levels. While the relationship between calmodulin binding proteins and Alzheimer's disease has been established, the connection to other neurodegenerative diseases is still being studied.
CURRENT ISSUES IN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
(2022)
Review
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Erik Maronde
Summary: Cyclic nucleotide analogues play crucial roles in cellular signal transduction and hold promise as drug candidates. The next generation of analogues show improved membrane permeability, degradation resistance, and target specificity, offering new avenues for basic and applied research.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Genetics & Heredity
Jinyan Shi, Xiangge Du
Summary: Drought stress limits the growth and yield of tomato seedlings. Exogenous ABA and Ca2+ can alleviate the damage caused by drought stress. In this study, the transcriptome characteristics of tomato treated with exogenous ABA and Ca2+ under drought stress were analyzed, and the role of SlCNGC genes in tomato drought resistance pathway and their regulation by exogenous ABA and Ca2+ were predicted.
FRONTIERS IN GENETICS
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Morihiro Shimizu, Xinya Mi, Futoshi Toyoda, Akiko Kojima, Wei-Guang Ding, Yutaka Fukushima, Mariko Omatsu-Kanbe, Hirotoshi Kitagawa, Hiroshi Matsuura
Summary: Propofol acts as an allosteric modulator of cAMP-dependent gating in HCN channels, affecting the amplitude and voltage dependence of the channel opening.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Sarah G. Cook, Nicole L. Rumian, K. Ulrich Bayer
Summary: CaMKII T286 autophosphorylation is required for both forms of hippocampal LTD, but with differential requirements for heterosynaptic communication of excitatory signals to inhibitory synapses.
JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY
(2022)
Article
Biophysics
Norbert Muecke, Tomasz Wocjan, Marine Jacquier, Harald Herrmann, Stephanie Portet
Summary: This study investigates the impact of flexibility on the assembly kinetics of intermediate filament proteins and reveals a complex relationship between flexibility and assembly rate. Additionally, it demonstrates that differences in individual amino acid sequences significantly affect the assembly rates.
BIOPHYSICAL JOURNAL
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Bartholomaus Danielczak, Marie Rasche, Julia Lenz, Eugenio Perez Patallo, Sophie Weyrauch, Florian Mahler, Michael Tope Agbadaola, Annette Meister, Jonathan Oyebamiji Babalola, Carolyn Vargas, Cenek Kolar, Sandro Keller
Summary: Glyco-DIBMA, a novel glycopolymer, demonstrates enhanced efficiency in solubilizing lipid vesicles to form nanodiscs under near-physiological conditions, maintaining a bilayer structure and enabling rapid lipid exchange. Experimental results have shown the superior performance of Glyco-DIBMA in extracting cellular membrane proteins and analytical applications.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Lukas Frank, Anne Rademacher, Norbert Muecke, Stephan M. Tirier, Emma Koeleman, Caroline Knotz, Sabrina Schumacher, Sabine A. Stainczyk, Frank Westermann, Stefan Froehling, Priya Chudasama, Karsten Rippe
Summary: This study introduces a new method called ALT-FISH to quantitate ALT activity in single cells by detecting the accumulation of single-stranded telomeric DNA and RNA. The method successfully identified ALT in cancer cell lines and primary tissue sections from different tumor entities, and it is suitable for high-throughput applications, which will facilitate screening for ALT-specific drugs.
NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Jorge Trojanowski, Lukas Frank, Anne Rademacher, Norbert Muecke, Pranas Grigaitis, Karsten Rippe
Summary: This study investigates the transcriptional activation process by comparing synthetic transcription factors (TFs) at a reporter gene array. The results show that the physicochemical properties of the activation domain (AD) can control TF assembly at chromatin. It was found that while the propensity for phase separation and activation strength of the AD were correlated, the actual formation of liquid-like TF droplets had a neutral or inhibitory effect on transcription activation. The study concludes that multivalent AD-mediated interactions enhance transcription activation capacity by increasing the TF's residence time in the chromatin-bound state and facilitating the recruitment of coactivators, independent of phase separation.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Paulina Piller, Heimo Wolinski, Robert A. Cordfunke, Jan Wouter Drijfhout, Sandro Keller, Karl Lohner, Nermina Malanovic
Summary: The development of antimicrobial agents against multidrug-resistant bacteria is crucial in the medical field. This study found that SAAP-148, an antimicrobial peptide, showed higher efficiency in killing bacteria and had stronger effects on membranes at both cellular and molecular levels compared to OP-145.
Article
Biophysics
Lovis Schween, Norbert Muecke, Stephanie Portet, Wolfgang H. Goldmann, Harald Herrmann, Ben Fabry
Summary: Vimentin is a highly charged intermediate filament protein that undergoes lateral and longitudinal assembly processes, which are accelerated by increasing salt concentration.
BIOPHYSICAL JOURNAL
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
Tanja Jeblick, Thomas Leisen, Christina E. Steidele, Isabell Albert, Jonas Mueller, Sabrina Kaiser, Florian Mahler, Frederik Sommer, Sandro Keller, Ralph Hueckelhoven, Matthias Hahn, David Scheuring
Summary: The secreted Botrytis protein hypersensitive response inducing protein 1 activates plant defense to kill plant cells. According to their lifestyle, plant pathogens are divided into biotrophic and necrotrophic organisms. However, the precise role of these proteins during infection is unknown.
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Jasmin Baron, Lena Bauernhofer, Sean R. A. Devenish, Sebastian Fiedler, Alison Ilsley, Sabrina Riedl, Dagmar Zweytick, David Glueck, Ariane Pessentheiner, Gregory Durand, Sandro Keller
Summary: Microfluidic diffusional sizing (MDS) is a method for determining the size and interactions of biomolecules and nanoparticles. Researchers have introduced fluorescent universal lipid labeling for MDS (FULL-MDS), which can determine particle size in unpurified samples. FULL-MDS is not only suitable for cell extracts but also faster, cheaper, and simpler than existing labeling schemes for synthetic nanodiscs.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
(2022)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Marine Soulie, Anais Deletraz, Moheddine Wehbie, Florian Mahler, Ilham Bouchemal, Aline Le Roy, Isabelle Petit-Hartlein, Sandro Keller, Annette Meister, Eva Pebay-Peyroula, Cecile Breyton, Christine Ebel, Gregory Durand
Summary: We synthesized zwitterionic sulfobetaine (SB) and dimethylamine oxide (AO) detergents with perfluorohexyl and perfluoropentyl groups and evaluated their properties. The critical micellar concentrations (CMCs) of these detergents were measured in the millimolar range. The morphologies of the aggregates were characterized, and it was found that the perfluoropentyl derivatives formed smaller micelles compared to the perfluorohexyl derivatives. The SB detergents showed superior performance in solubilizing lipid vesicles and stabilizing membrane proteins.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Kevin Janson, Fotis L. Kyrilis, Christian Tueting, Marie Alfes, Manabendra Das, Toni K. Trager, Carla Schmidt, Farzad Hamdi, Carolyn Vargas, Sandro Keller, Annette Meister, Panagiotis L. Kastritis
Summary: New technologies for purifying membrane-bound protein complexes in combination with cryo-electron microscopy have allowed the exploration of complexes under native conditions. The use of polymer-encapsulated nanodiscs enables the study of membrane proteins while retaining protein-protein and protein-lipid interactions. This study demonstrates that combining biochemical enrichment protocols with polymer-based nanodiscs improves the quality of recovered endogenous membrane-protein complexes, providing unprecedented opportunities for a deeper understanding of eukaryotic membrane proteomes.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Loretta Eggenreich, Carolyn Vargas, Cenek Kolar, Sandro Keller
Summary: Polymer-encapsulated nanodiscs allow the study of membrane proteins in a natural lipid-bilayer environment with the ability to exchange lipids. Electroneutral nanodisc-forming polymers have been introduced to avoid interference with protein-lipid interactions and analysis techniques. In this study, time-resolved Forster resonance energy transfer was used to investigate lipid exchange among nanodiscs formed by the electroneutral polymer Sulfo-DIBMA. The presence of monovalent and divalent cations did not influence lipid exchange among Sulfo-DIBMA nanodiscs, demonstrating their robustness against varying ion concentrations.
BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Nadine Angerer, Paulina Piller, Enrico F. Semeraro, Sandro Keller, Georg Pabst
Summary: Detergents are important for extracting membrane proteins, and this research investigated the solubilization of multi-component lipid membranes using a commonly used detergent. The results showed that the composition complexity of the lipids affects the solubilization behavior of the membranes.
BIOPHYSICAL CHEMISTRY
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Alessandra Luchini, Julia Lenz, Andreas Haahr Larsen, Sandro Keller
Summary: Researchers have introduced new co-polymers to produce polymer-lipid particles with nanodisc structure, which can stabilize membrane proteins and allow their characterization. These particles can also be used to directly extract membrane proteins from native membranes. The size and shape of the particles can be controlled by adjusting the polymer/lipid ratio, making them suitable for studying different membrane proteins.
Article
Polymer Science
Valentin Monjal, Alexis Moreno, David Glueck, Sandro Keller, Pierre Guillet, Gregory Durand
Summary: In this study, a series of amphiphilic methacrylate copolymers were synthesized. By varying the monomer ratio, membrane proteins were extracted and provided with a stabilizing environment.
JOURNAL OF POLYMER SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Paulina Piller, Enrico F. Semeraro, Gerald N. Rechberger, Sandro Keller, Georg Pabst
Summary: The activity of integral membrane proteins is influenced by the properties of the lipid matrix. In this study, the researchers investigated the effect of transbilayer asymmetry on the activity of the membrane-embedded enzyme OmpLA. They found that increasing membrane asymmetry resulted in a decrease in the enzyme's activity. This study highlights the importance of membrane asymmetry in controlling membrane-protein activity.