酿酒酵母组氨酸转运蛋白Hip1p的泛素化水平对组氨酸利用的影响

【目的】为了研究泛素化对组氨酸转运及调控的影响。【方法】应用泛素化位点预测及定点突变等技术手段,Hip1p的3个潜在的泛素化位点K30、K42和K52被突变。这些突变的Hip1p被克隆到泛素化检测质粒中,检测泛素化位点突变对Hip1p的泛素化水平的影响。同时这些突变对细胞生长及组氨酸利用的影响也进一步做了检测。【结果】Hip1p的3个赖氨酸位点K30、K42和K52突变能有效降低其泛素化水平。同时,双重突变对其泛素化水平有明显的协同作用,并进一步影响了细胞生长和组氨酸利用。【结论】泛素化水平调控能有效调节组氨酸代谢,引起细胞对组氨酸利用的改变,为进一步研究氨基酸转运蛋白的调控机制提供了重要的依据。     

酿酒酵母转运蛋白Agp1p泛素化对氮源利用的影响

摘要:【目的】研究酿酒酵母细胞膜关键氮源转运蛋白Agp1p的泛素化对其氮源利用的影响。【方法】构建一个基于双分子荧光互补技术的泛素化检测载体,检测Agp1p是否受到泛素化。采取定点突变的方法对Agp1p中可能的泛素化位点进行突变,研究其泛素化的关键作用位点及其对酿酒酵母氮源利用的影响。【结果】在谷氨酰胺、精氨酸、脯氨酸及铵盐为唯一氮源的培养基中,转运蛋白Agp1p均受到泛素化调控。定点突变实验结果显示,与出发菌株相比,潜在泛素化位点突变后,菌体荧光强度均有一定程度减弱。其中四重突变体Agp1pK11,14,98,112R荧光强度最弱,表明泛素化过程被显著抑制。系列突变菌株在9种氨基酸为复合氮源以及尿素为单一氮源的发酵实验表明,四重突变体菌体氮源利用率提高效果显著。【结论】转运蛋白Agp1p的泛素化受到不同氮源的影响,泛素化位点突变可以显著影响其泛素化过程,从而改变细胞对氮源的利用过程。     

非经典泛素化的研究进展

泛素化是真核生物最普遍最重要的翻译后修饰之一,控制基因转录表达、细胞生长死亡、分子运输、代谢、发育和免疫反应等大多数生理过程。经典泛素系统的通路和机制越来越明晰,同时非经典的泛素化也逐渐被发现。本文将对经典泛素系统进行简单回顾,并且对非蛋白底物泛素化、非赖氨酸位点泛素化、非经典E3泛素连接酶等最新非经典泛素化进行阐述。     

泛素蛋白磷酸化修饰的功能与解析

泛素化是存在于真核生物中一种重要的翻译后修饰过程,参与调控包括蛋白质降解在内的多种生命活动。实现这一调控过程需要将一个由76个氨基酸组成的泛素蛋白共价连接到底物蛋白上。同时,泛素本身也存在多种翻译后修饰,包括泛素化、磷酸化、乙酰化等,进一步丰富了泛素的修饰类型,决定了底物蛋白不同的命运。近年来,伴随着第65位丝氨酸磷酸化泛素蛋白参与调控线粒体自噬这一突破性进展,泛素蛋白其余磷酸化位点的功能研究也获得越来越多的关注。本文根据目前已有的国内外研究和报道,总结了泛素蛋白已知的磷酸化修饰位点,梳理了泛素蛋白第12位和66位苏氨酸、第57位和65位丝氨酸等位点的磷酸化修饰对其生物物理特性带来的改变,并对相应修饰位点所涉及的生物学功能调控进行了综述。     

组蛋白泛素化与去泛素化对染色质和基因表达的研究进展

组蛋白或转录因子或辅助因子进行泛素化和去泛素化,能够介导某些生理和病理过程。泛素化和去泛素化的动态平衡确保染色质处于健康的稳定状态。组蛋白泛素化酶和去泛素化酶通过识别DNA损伤位点、传导信号和招募修复因子等方式参与维持染色质稳态。组蛋白泛素化修饰和去泛素化修饰通过抑制(多数)或促进(少数)基因转录,从而影响基因表达。本综述主要关注组蛋白泛素化修饰和去泛素化修饰与染色质稳态和基因转录的关系,探讨这些过程在发育调控和在某些疾病中的作用,为相关疾病的治疗提供理论依据。     

蛋白质泛素化修饰的生物信息学研究进展

泛素-蛋白酶体系统(Ubiquitin-proteasome system, UPS)介导了真核生物80%~85%的蛋白质降解, 该蛋白质降解途径具有依赖ATP、高效、高度选择性的特点。除参与蛋白质降解之外, 泛素化修饰还可以直接影响蛋白质的活性和定位。由于泛素化修饰底物蛋白在细胞中的广泛存在, 泛素化修饰可以调控包括细胞周期、细胞凋亡、转录调控、DNA损伤修复以及免疫应答等在内的多种细胞活动。近年来, 泛素-蛋白酶体系统相关的蛋白质组学数据不断产出, 有效地管理、组织并合理分析这些数据显得尤为必要。文章综述了当前世界范围内针对蛋白质泛素化修饰展开的生物信息学研究, 总结了前人的工作结果, 包括UPS相关蛋白质数据的收录、泛素化修饰网络的构建和分析、泛素化修饰位点的预测及泛素化修饰motif的研究等方面内容, 并对该领域未来的发展方向进行了讨论。     

LUBAC介导RabGEF1的线性泛素化修饰

目的 验证RabGEF1 (Rab guanine nucleotide exchange factor 1)为线性泛素化修饰的新底物。方法 在pEF6/MycHis C载体中克隆人RabGEF1基因。通过免疫共沉淀（Co-IP）实验验证RabGEF1和HOIP的相互作用。利用GST-pulldown实验探索RabGEFl与HOIP相互作用结构域。通过免疫荧光实验验证RabGEF1和HOIP的相互作用与亚细胞定位。应用体内泛素化实验检测RabGEF1的线性泛素化修饰。通过NTA-His泛素化实验进一步明确RabGEF1能够发生线性泛素化修饰。将RabGEF1的泛素化蛋白质样品进行质谱分析，根据质谱结果提示的RabGEF1泛素化位点构建赖氨酸位点突变质粒，进一步在体内泛素化实验中验证RabGEF1的线性泛素化修饰位点。结果 RabGEF1与HOIP存在相互作用，且HOIP通过ZF-NEF结构域与RabGEF1发生直接相互作用。RabGEF1与HOIP共同定位于细胞质。LUBAC介导RabGEF1发生线性泛素化修饰依赖于LUBAC酶活性，RabGEF1泛素化修饰位点为K158。结论 Rab...     

肝癌细胞系Hep3B的泛素化蛋白质组学

泛素化修饰是细胞内最重要的翻译后修饰形式之一,对细胞内蛋白质的稳定、降解、定位以及生物活性的调节起到重要作用。但因其在细胞内丰度低、降解周期短等特点而很难被检测。本研究中,制备的泛素结合结构域蛋白(Ubiquitin-binding domains,UBDs)用于富集肝癌细胞系Hep3B中的泛素化蛋白,并通过液相色谱-串联质谱联用的方法对富集的泛素化蛋白进行鉴定。实验共鉴定到1 900个潜在的泛素化蛋白和158个泛素化位点,这些被鉴定到的泛素化位点分属于102个蛋白。生物信息学分析发现泛素化蛋白显著富集的相关通路与肿瘤的发生发展密切相关,此结果暗示肿瘤细胞内泛素化-蛋白酶体的失调与肿瘤细胞的信号传导及细胞外基质的变化等具有较高的关联性。     

泛素、泛素链和蛋白质泛素化研究进展

蛋白质泛素化是以泛素单体和泛素链作为信号分子,共价修饰细胞内其他蛋白质的一种翻译后修饰形式。不同蛋白质底物、同一底物的不同氨基酸修饰位点以及同一位点上泛素链连接方式的不同均可导致细胞效应的差异。蛋白质泛素化在真核细胞内广泛存在,除了介导蛋白质的26S蛋白酶体降解途径之外,还广泛参与了基因转录、蛋白质翻译、信号传导、细胞周期控制以及生长发育等几乎所有的生命活动过程。泛素链的形成及其修饰过程的任何失调均可导致生物体内环境的紊乱,从而产生严重的疾病。文中结合实验室研究,综述了泛素的发现历史、基因特点、晶体结构,特别是泛素链的组装过程、结构、功能以及与人类相关疾病关系的新进展,可为这些疾病的治疗靶点和药物靶标的研究提供思路。     

泛素化/去泛素化系统的生物化学和生物学功能

泛素是生物体内一种非常重要的小分子蛋白,在多种信号通路中都起重要的调节作用。该文对近两三年国际上对泛素化/去泛素化系统的研究进展做了简单的概述,并对未来的发展方向进行了预测。     

Non-degradative Ubiquitination of Protein Kinases

Growing evidence supports other regulatory roles for protein ubiquitination in addition to serving as a tag for proteasomal degradation. In contrast to other common post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation, little is known about how non-degradative ubiquitination modulates protein structure, dynamics, and function. Due to the wealth of knowledge concerning protein kinase structure and regulation, we examined kinase ubiquitination using ubiquitin remnant immunoaffinity enrichment and quantitative mass spectrometry to identify ubiquitinated kinases and the sites of ubiquitination in Jurkat and HEK293 cells. We find that, unlike phosphorylation, ubiquitination most commonly occurs in structured domains, and on the kinase domain, ubiquitination is concentrated in regions known to be important for regulating activity. We hypothesized that ubiquitination, like other post-translational modifications, may alter the conformational equilibrium of the modified protein. We chose one human kinase, ZAP-70, to simulate using molecular dynamics with and without a monoubiquitin modification. In Jurkat cells, ZAP-70 is ubiquitinated at several sites that are not sensitive to proteasome inhibition and thus may have other regulatory roles. Our simulations show that ubiquitination influences the conformational ensemble of ZAP-70 in a site-dependent manner. When monoubiquitinated at K377, near the C-helix, the active conformation of the ZAP-70 C-helix is disrupted. In contrast, when monoubiquitinated at K476, near the kinase hinge region, an active-like ZAP-70 C-helix conformation is stabilized. These results lead to testable hypotheses that ubiquitination directly modulates kinase activity, and that ubiquitination is likely to alter structure, dynamics, and function in other protein classes as well.     

Prediction of lysine ubiquitination with mRMR feature selection and analysis

Ubiquitination, one of the most important post-translational modifications of proteins, occurs when ubiquitin (a small 76-amino acid protein) is attached to lysine on a target protein. It often commits the labeled protein to degradation and plays important roles in regulating many cellular processes implicated in a variety of diseases. Since ubiquitination is rapid and reversible, it is time-consuming and labor-intensive to identify ubiquitination sites using conventional experimental approaches. To efficiently discover lysine-ubiquitination sites, a sequence-based predictor of ubiquitination site was developed based on nearest neighbor algorithm. We used the maximum relevance and minimum redundancy principle to identify the key features and the incremental feature selection procedure to optimize the prediction engine. PSSM conservation scores, amino acid factors and disorder scores of the surrounding sequence formed the optimized 456 features. The Mathew’s correlation coefficient (MCC) of our ubiquitination site predictor achieved 0.142 by jackknife cross-validation test on a large benchmark dataset. In independent test, the MCC of our method was 0.139, higher than the existing ubiquitination site predictor UbiPred and UbPred. The MCCs of UbiPred and UbPred on the same test set were 0.135 and 0.117, respectively. Our analysis shows that the conservation of amino acids at and around lysine plays an important role in ubiquitination site prediction. What’s more, disorder and ubiquitination have a strong relevance. These findings might provide useful insights for studying the mechanisms of ubiquitination and modulating the ubiquitination pathway, potentially leading to potential therapeutic strategies in the future.     

mUbiSiDa: A Comprehensive Database for Protein Ubiquitination Sites in Mammals

Motivation

Protein ubiquitination is one of the important post-translational modifications by attaching ubiquitin to specific lysine (K) residues in target proteins, and plays important regulatory roles in many cell processes. Recent studies indicated that abnormal protein ubiquitination have been implicated in many diseases by degradation of many key regulatory proteins including tumor suppressor, oncoprotein, and cell cycle regulator. The detailed information of protein ubiquitination sites is useful for scientists to investigate the mechanism of many cell activities and related diseases.

Results

In this study we established mUbiSida for mammalian Ubiquitination Site Database, which provides a scientific community with a comprehensive, freely and high-quality accessible resource of mammalian protein ubiquitination sites. In mUbiSida, we deposited about 35,494 experimentally validated ubiquitinated proteins with 110,976 ubiquitination sites from five species. The mUbiSiDa can also provide blast function to predict novel protein ubiquitination sites in other species by blast the query sequence in the deposit sequences in mUbiSiDa. The mUbiSiDa was designed to be a widely used tool for biologists and biomedical researchers with a user-friendly interface, and facilitate the further research of protein ubiquitination, biological networks and functional proteomics. The mUbiSiDa database is freely available at http://reprod.njmu.edu.cn/mUbiSiDa.     

Ubiquitination of Neuronal Nitric-oxide Synthase in the Calmodulin-binding Site Triggers Proteasomal Degradation of the Protein

Nitric-oxide synthase, a cytochrome P450-like hemoprotein enzyme, catalyzes the synthesis of nitric oxide, a critical signaling molecule in a variety of physiological processes. Our laboratory has discovered that certain drugs suicide-inactivate neuronal nitric-oxide synthase (nNOS) and lead to the preferential ubiquitination of the inactivated nNOS by an Hsp70- and CHIP (C terminus of Hsc70-interacting protein)-dependent process. To further understand the process by which altered nNOS is recognized, ubiquitinated, and proteasomally degraded, we examined the sites of ubiquitination on nNOS. We utilized an in vitro ubiquitination system containing purified E1, E2 (UbcH5a), Hsp70, and CHIP that recapitulates the ability of the cells to selectively recognize and ubiquitinate the altered forms of nNOS. LC-MS/MS analysis of the tryptic peptides obtained from the in vitro ubiquitinated nNOS identified 12 ubiquitination sites. Nine of the sites were within the oxygenase domain and two were in the calmodulin-binding site, which links the oxygenase and reductase domains, and one site was in the reductase domain. Mutational analysis of the lysines in the calmodulin-binding site revealed that Lys-739 is a major site for poly-ubiquitination of nNOS in vitro and regulates, in large part, the CHIP-dependent degradation of nNOS in HEK293 cells, as well as in in vitro studies with fraction II. Elucidating the exact site of ubiquitination is an important step in understanding how chaperones recognize and trigger degradation of nNOS.     

A method to distinguish between lysine acetylation and lysine ubiquitination with feature selection and analysis

Lysine acetylation and ubiquitination are two primary post-translational modifications (PTMs) in most eukaryotic proteins. Lysine residues are targets for both types of PTMs, resulting in different cellular roles. With the increasing availability of protein sequences and PTM data, it is challenging to distinguish the two types of PTMs on lysine residues. Experimental approaches are often laborious and time consuming. There is an urgent need for computational tools to distinguish between lysine acetylation and ubiquitination. In this study, we developed a novel method, called DAUFSA (distinguish between lysine acetylation and lysine ubiquitination with feature selection and analysis), to discriminate ubiquitinated and acetylated lysine residues. The method incorporated several types of features: PSSM (position-specific scoring matrix) conservation scores, amino acid factors, secondary structures, solvent accessibilities, and disorder scores. By using the mRMR (maximum relevance minimum redundancy) method and the IFS (incremental feature selection) method, an optimal feature set containing 290 features was selected from all incorporated features. A dagging-based classifier constructed by the optimal features achieved a classification accuracy of 69.53%, with an MCC of .3853. An optimal feature set analysis showed that the PSSM conservation score features and the amino acid factor features were the most important attributes, suggesting differences between acetylation and ubiquitination. Our study results also supported previous findings that different motifs were employed by acetylation and ubiquitination. The feature differences between the two modifications revealed in this study are worthy of experimental validation and further investigation.     

Structural Propensities of Human Ubiquitination Sites: Accessibility,Centrality and Local Conformation

The existence and function of most proteins in the human proteome are regulated by the ubiquitination process. To date, tens of thousands human ubiquitination sites have been identified from high-throughput proteomic studies. However, the mechanism of ubiquitination site selection remains elusive because of the complicated sequence pattern flanking the ubiquitination sites. In this study, we perform a systematic analysis of 1,330 ubiquitination sites in 505 protein structures and quantify the significantly high accessibility and unexpectedly high centrality of human ubiquitination sites. Further analysis suggests that the higher centrality of ubiquitination sites is associated with the multi-functionality of ubiquitination sites, among which protein-protein interaction sites are common targets of ubiquitination. Moreover, we demonstrate that ubiquitination sites are flanked by residues with non-random local conformation. Finally, we provide quantitative and unambiguous evidence that most of the structural propensities contain specific information about ubiquitination site selection that is not represented by the sequence pattern. Therefore, the hypothesis about the structural level of the ubiquitination site selection mechanism has been substantially approved.     

应用IP-2D nano-HPLC-MALDI-TOF-TOF鉴定蛋白质泛素化修饰

近年来,在蛋白质研究中,特别是在蛋白质翻译后修饰(PTM)的研究中,生物质谱技术的应用越来越广泛,与纳升级HPLC的联合应用,使这一技术手段更加有效.针对泛素化在细胞功能调控中发挥关键作用的PTM的特点,将免疫沉淀、2D nano-HPLC和基质辅助激光解吸/电离串联飞行时间质谱(IP-2D nano-HPLC-MALDI-TOF-TOF)有机整合,建立了天然状态下蛋白质泛素化位点的鉴定方法,并应用这一方法确定出K562细胞内具有酪氨酸激酶活性的蛋白c-ABL的泛素化位点.为定性鉴定生理和病理状态下内源性蛋白的泛素化修饰提供了借鉴.     

泛素化修饰对维甲酸诱导基因I样受体家族(RLRs)信号通路分子调控作用的研究进展

维甲酸诱导基因I样受体家族(retinoid acid-inducible gene-I-like receptors, RLRs)信号通路作为众多抗感染免疫信号通路之一，在诱导促炎细胞因子、趋化因子和I型干扰素产生等方面发挥重要的调控作用。作为蛋白质翻译后修饰之一的泛素化(ubiquitination)，是由泛素蛋白(ubiquitin)与目标蛋白上不同的氨基酸位点产生结合来调控蛋白的命运，如启动蛋白酶体途径降解蛋白或激活转运等功能。而RLRs信号通路分子的泛素化修饰既是调控多种效应因子的方式之一，也是病毒经此诱发动物重要疾病以及自身免疫病、慢性炎症的经典路径之一。本文主要综述RLRs信号通路中重要的效应器分子的典型结构特征、泛素化修饰类型和功能，探讨泛素化修饰调控RLRs信号通路关键分子的作用，为相关疾病的干预或治疗提供参考。     

Protein partners of deubiquitinating enzymes

Protein modification by ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like molecules is a critical regulatory process. Like most regulated protein modifications, ubiquitination is reversible. Deubiquitination, the reversal of ubiquitination, is quickly being recognized as an important regulatory strategy. Nearly one hundred human DUBs (deubiquitinating enzymes) in five different gene families oppose the action of several hundred ubiquitin ligases, suggesting that both ubiquitination and its reversal are highly regulated and specific processes. It has long been recognized that ubiquitin ligases are modular enzyme systems that often depend on scaffolds and adaptors to deliver substrates to the catalytically active macromolecular complex. Although many DUBs bind ubiquitin with reasonable affinities (in the nM to microM range), a larger number have little affinity but exhibit robust catalytic capability. Thus it is apparent that these DUBs must acquire their substrates by binding the target protein in a conjugate or by associating with other macromolecular complexes. We would then expect that a study of protein partners of DUBs would reveal a variety of substrates, scaffolds, adaptors and ubiquitin receptors. In the present review we suggest that, like ligases, much of the regulation and specificity of deubiquitination arises from the association of DUBs with these protein partners.     

Large-scale prediction of protein ubiquitination sites using a multimodal deep architecture

Background

Ubiquitination, which is also called “lysine ubiquitination”, occurs when an ubiquitin is attached to lysine (K) residues in targeting proteins. As one of the most important post translational modifications (PTMs), it plays the significant role not only in protein degradation, but also in other cellular functions. Thus, systematic anatomy of the ubiquitination proteome is an appealing and challenging research topic. The existing methods for identifying protein ubiquitination sites can be divided into two kinds: mass spectrometry and computational methods. Mass spectrometry-based experimental methods can discover ubiquitination sites from eukaryotes, but are time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, it is priority to develop computational approaches that can effectively and accurately identify protein ubiquitination sites.

Results

The existing computational methods usually require feature engineering, which may lead to redundancy and biased representations. While deep learning is able to excavate underlying characteristics from large-scale training data via multiple-layer networks and non-linear mapping operations. In this paper, we proposed a deep architecture within multiple modalities to identify the ubiquitination sites. First, according to prior knowledge and biological knowledge, we encoded protein sequence fragments around candidate ubiquitination sites into three modalities, namely raw protein sequence fragments, physico-chemical properties and sequence profiles, and designed different deep network layers to extract the hidden representations from them. Then, the generative deep representations corresponding to three modalities were merged to build the final model. We performed our algorithm on the available largest scale protein ubiquitination sites database PLMD, and achieved 66.4% specificity, 66.7% sensitivity, 66.43% accuracy, and 0.221 MCC value. A number of comparative experiments also indicated that our multimodal deep architecture outperformed several popular protein ubiquitination site prediction tools.

Conclusion

The results of comparative experiments validated the effectiveness of our deep network and also displayed that our method outperformed several popular protein ubiquitination site prediction tools. The source codes of our proposed method are available at https://github.com/jiagenlee/deepUbiquitylation.