Function of liprins in cell motility

Liprins have been known for years to play an essential role in setting up functional synapses in the nervous system. On the other hand, these proteins had been first identified in non-neuronal cells as multivalent proteins that may affect the integrin-mediated interactions of the cells with extracellular matrix ligands. Although the research on the function of liprins in non-neuronal cells has been quiescent for several years, a number of recent findings are putting them back on stage again as important players also in the regulation of non-neuronal cell motility, and possibly of tumor cell behavior. The aim of this review is to highlight the findings supporting the importance of liprins as central regulators of cell adhesion and motility, making them an interesting family of proteins to be considered for future studies on the mechanisms regulating cell migration.     

Purifying selection against spurious splicing signals contributes to the base composition evolution of the polypyrimidine tract

Among eukaryotes, the major spliceosomal pathway is highly conserved. While long introns may contain additional regulatory sequences, the ones in short introns seem to be nearly exclusively related to splicing. Although these regulatory sequences involved in splicing are well-characterized, little is known about their evolution. At the 3′ end of introns, the splice signal nearly universally contains the dimer AG, which consists of purines, and the polypyrimidine tract upstream of this 3′ splice signal is characterized by over-representation of pyrimidines. If the over-representation of pyrimidines in the polypyrimidine tract is also due to avoidance of a premature splicing signal, we hypothesize that AG should be the most under-represented dimer. Through the use of DNA-strand asymmetry patterns, we confirm this prediction in fruit flies of the genus Drosophila and by comparing the asymmetry patterns to a presumably neutrally evolving region, we quantify the selection strength acting on each motif. Moreover, our inference and simulation method revealed that the best explanation for the base composition evolution of the polypyrimidine tract is the joint action of purifying selection against a spurious 3′ splice signal and the selection for pyrimidines. Patterns of asymmetry in other eukaryotes indicate that avoidance of premature splicing similarly affects the nucleotide composition in their polypyrimidine tracts.     

“Stripe” transcription factors provide accessibility to co-binding partners in mammalian genomes

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A new linear cyclin docking motif that mediates exclusively S‐phase CDK‐specific signaling

Cyclin‐dependent kinases (CDKs), the master regulators of cell division, are activated by different cyclins at different cell cycle stages. In addition to being activators of CDKs, cyclins recognize various linear motifs to target CDK activity to specific proteins. We uncovered a cyclin docking motif, NLxxxL, that contributes to phosphorylation‐dependent degradation of the CDK inhibitor Far1 at the G1/S stage in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This motif is recognized exclusively by S‐phase CDK (S‐CDK) Clb5/6‐Cdc28 and is considerably more potent than the conventional RxL docking motif. The NLxxxL and RxL motifs were found to overlap in some target proteins, suggesting that cyclin docking motifs can evolve to switch from one to another for fine‐tuning of cell cycle events. Using time‐lapse fluorescence microscopy, we show how different docking connections temporally control phosphorylation‐driven target degradation. This also revealed a differential function of the phosphoadaptor protein Cks1, as Cks1 docking potentiated degron phosphorylation of RxL‐containing but not of NLxxxL‐containing substrates. The NLxxxL motif was found to govern S‐cyclin‐specificity in multiple yeast CDK targets including Fin1, Lif1, and Slx4, suggesting its wider importance.     

Inter-dependent Centrosomal Co-localization of the cen and ik2 cis-Natural Antisense mRNAs in Drosophila

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