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T Greener

Publications and source records attributed to T Greener.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

Caenorhabditis elegans auxilin: a J-domain protein essential for clathrin-mediated endocytosis in vivo.

The budding of clathrin-coated vesicles is essential for protein transport. After budding, clathrin must be uncoated before the vesicles can fuse with other membranous structures. In vitro, the molecular chaperone Hsc70 uncoats clathrin-coated vesicles in an ATP-dependent process that requires a specific J-domain protein such as auxilin. However, there is little evidence that either Hsc70 or auxilin is essential in vivo. Here we show that C. elegans has a single auxilin homologue that is identical to mammalian auxilin in its in vitro activity. When RNA-mediated interference (RNAi) is used to inhibit auxilin expression in C. elegans, oocytes show markedly reduced receptor-mediated endocytosis of yolk protein tagged with green fluorescent protein (GFP). In addition, most of these worms arrest during larval development, exhibit defective distribution of GFP-clathrin in many cell types, and show a marked change in clathrin dynamics, as determined by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP). We conclude that auxilin is required for in vivo clathrin-mediated endocytosis and development in C. elegans.

Adaptor Proteins, Vesicular Transport↗

Expression of auxilin or AP180 inhibits endocytosis by mislocalizing clathrin: evidence for formation of nascent pits containing AP1 or AP2 but not clathrin.

Although uncoating of clathrin-coated vesicles is a key event in clathrin-mediated endocytosis it is unclear what prevents uncoating of clathrin-coated pits before they pinch off to become clathrin-coated vesicles. We have shown that the J-domain proteins auxilin and GAK are required for uncoating by Hsc70 in vitro. In the present study, we expressed auxilin in cultured cells to determine if this would block endocytosis by causing premature uncoating of clathrin-coated pits. We found that expression of auxilin indeed inhibited endocytosis. However, expression of auxilin with its J-domain mutated so that it no longer interacted with Hsc70 also inhibited endocytosis as did expression of the clathrin-assembly protein, AP180, or its clathrin-binding domain. Accompanying this inhibition, we observed a marked decrease in clathrin associated with the plasma membrane and the trans-Golgi network, which provided us with an opportunity to determine whether the absence of clathrin from clathrin-coated pits affected the distribution of the clathrin assembly proteins AP1 and AP2. Surprisingly we found almost no change in the association of AP2 and AP1 with the plasma membrane and the trans-Golgi network, respectively. This was particularly obvious when auxilin or GAK was expressed with functional J-domains since, in these cases, almost all of the clathrin was sequestered in granules that also contained Hsc70 and auxilin or GAK. We conclude that expression of clathrin-binding proteins inhibits clathrin-mediated endocytosis by sequestering clathrin so that it is no longer available to bind to nascent pits but that assembly proteins bind to these pits independently of clathrin.

Adaptor Protein Complex 1↗

Role of cyclin G-associated kinase in uncoating clathrin-coated vesicles from non-neuronal cells.

Auxilin is a brain-specific DnaJ homolog that is required for Hsc70 to dissociate clathrin from bovine brain clathrin-coated vesicles. However, Hsc70 is also involved in uncoating clathrin-coated vesicles formed at the plasma membrane of non-neuronal cells suggesting that an auxilin homolog may be required for uncoating in these cells. One candidate is cyclin G-associated kinase (GAK), a 150-kDa protein expressed ubiquitously in various tissues. GAK has a C-terminal domain with high sequence similarity to auxilin; like auxilin this C-terminal domain consists of three subdomains, an N-terminal tensin-like domain, a clathrin-binding domain, and a C-terminal J-domain. Western blot analysis shows that GAK is present in rat liver, bovine testes, and bovine brain clathrin-coated vesicles. More importantly, liver clathrin-coated vesicles, which contain GAK but not auxilin, are uncoated by Hsc70, suggesting that GAK acts as an auxilin homolog in non-neuronal cells. In support of this view, the clathrin-binding domain of GAK alone induces clathrin polymerization into baskets and the combined clathrin-binding domain and J-domain of GAK supports uncoating of AP180-clathrin baskets by Hsc70 at pH 7 and induces Hsc70 binding to clathrin baskets at pH 6. Immunolocalization studies suggest that GAK is a cytosolic protein that is concentrated in the perinuclear region; it appears to be highly associated with the trans-Golgi where the budding of clathrin-coated vesicles occurs. We propose that GAK is a required cofactor for the uncoating of clathrin-coated vesicles by Hsc70 in non-neuronal cells.

Adaptor Proteins, Vesicular Transport↗

A yeast DNA J protein required for uncoating of clathrin-coated vesicles in vivo.

Clathrin-coated vesicles mediate diverse processes such as nutrient uptake, downregulation of hormone receptors, formation of synaptic vesicles, virus entry, and transport of biosynthetic proteins to lysosomes. Cycles of coat assembly and disassembly are integral features of clathrin-mediated vesicular transport (Fig. 1a). Coat assembly involves recruitment of clathrin triskelia, adaptor complexes and other factors that influence coat assembly, cargo sequestration, membrane invagination and scission (Fig. 1a). Coat disassembly is thought to be essential for fusion of vesicles with target membranes and for recycling components of clathrin coats to the cytoplasm for further rounds of vesicle formation. In vitro, cytosolic heat-shock protein 70 (Hsp70) and the J-domain co-chaperone auxilin catalyse coat disassembly. However, a specific function of these factors in uncoating in vivo has not been demonstrated, leaving the physiological mechanism and significance of uncoating unclear. Here we report the identification and characterization of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae J-domain protein, Aux1. Inactivation of Aux1 results in accumulation of clathrin-coated vesicles, impaired cargo delivery, and an increased ratio of vesicle-associated to cytoplasmic clathrin. Our results demonstrate an in vivo uncoating function of a J domain co-chaperone and establish the physiological significance of uncoating in transport mediated by clathrin-coated vesicles.

Adaptor Proteins, Vesicular Transport↗

Pulsed field gel electrophoresis identifies an outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype Montevideo infection associated with a supermarket hot food outlet.

In February 1996 Salmonella enterica serotype Montevideo infection in a patient in the North Tyneside area was attributed to consumption of cooked chicken bought from a supermarket hot food outlet. Isolates from the patient, leftover food, and environmental samples were indistinguishable by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). PFGE also demonstrated that an outbreak of infection with S. Montevideo associated with the hot food outlet had occurred in late 1995 and early 1996. This study shows the importance of microbial strain discrimination in outbreak investigations and illustrates the value of close liaison between microbiologists, epidemiologists, and environmental health officers in the control of salmonella outbreaks.

Aged↗

Interaction of auxilin with the molecular chaperone, Hsc70.

We have studied the direct interaction of the constitutive isoform of Hsp70 (Hsc70) with the DnaJ homolog, auxilin, a cofactor that binds to clathrin-coated vesicles and is required for their uncoating by Hsc70. Auxilin caused a 5-fold increase in Hsc70 ATPase activity and a corresponding increase in steady-state levels of bound ADP; the dissociation constant for this effect was 0.6 microM. Auxilin also induced polymerization of Hsc70 and bound to the resulting polymer at a 1:1 molar ratio; here too the dissociation constant was 0.6 microM. Both this binding and polymerization required ATP; the Hsc70 depolymerized with a 4-min half-life when ATP was completely hydrolyzed to ADP. Although auxilin induces polymerization stoichiometrically and other DnaJ homologs induce polymerization catalytically, these data show that auxilin is similar to other DnaJ homologs in its ability to activate the Hsc70 ATPase activity, to polymerize Hsc70, and in the nucleotide dependence of this polymerization. Furthermore, the 70-amino acid J-domain of auxilin polymerized Hsc70 with the same nucleotide dependence as intact auxilin. Therefore, although only auxilin and not other DnaJ homologs support uncoating, our data suggest that various DnaJ homologs share a common mechanism of interaction with Hsc70, perhaps because their J-domains interact similarly with Hsc70.

Adaptor Proteins, Vesicular Transport↗

A novel multicopy suppressor of a groEL mutation includes two nested open reading frames transcribed from different promoters.

When present on a multicopy plasmid, a newly discovered gene (sugE) mapping to 94 min on the Escherichia coli chromosome, suppresses a groEL mutation and mimics the effects of groE overexpression. A groEL mutant of E.coli, transformed with the Klebsiella pneumoniae nif gene cluster, failed to accumulate nitrogenase components [Govezensky et al. (1991) J. Bacteriol., 173, 6339-6346]. Transformation with sugE reversed the mutant phenotype. In wild type K.pneumoniae, transformation with sugE accelerated the rate of nitrogenase biogenesis after nif derepression. In E.coli, transformation with sugE enabled bacteriophage T4 growth in a groEL mutant. A continuous 178 codon open reading frame (ORF) in sugE encloses another, in-frame, 105 codon ORF similar to a predicted ORF in Proteus vulgaris. In vivo products of both sugE ORFs were observed in transformants expressing the gene from a T7 promoter. In non-transformed cells, a typical sigma 70-dependent promoter found upstream of the larger ORF directs sugE transcription during growth at 30 degrees C. At elevated temperatures or in stationary phase cells, another promoter, found within the coding sequence upstream of the smaller ORF, is activated independently of sigma 32. The results suggest that sugE encodes a chaperonin-related system whose composition might vary with temperature and growth phase.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

Involvement of GroEL in nif gene regulation and nitrogenase assembly.

Several approaches were used to study the role of GroEL, the prototype chaperonin, in the nitrogen fixation (nif) system. An Escherichia coli groEL mutant transformed with the Klebsiella pneumoniae nif gene cluster accumulated very low to nondetectable levels of nitrogenase components compared with the isogenic wild-type strain or the mutant cotransformed with the wild-type groE operon. In K. pneumoniae, overexpression of the E. coli groE operon markedly accelerated the rate of appearance of the MoFe protein and its constituent polypeptides after the start of derepression. The groEL mutation in E. coli decreased NifA-dependent beta-galactosidase expression from the nifH promoter but did not affect the constitutive expression of nifA from the tet promoter of ntr-controlled expression from the nifLA promoter. The possibility that GroEL is required for the correct folding of NifA was supported by coimmunoprecipitation of NifA with anti-GroEL antibodies. Kinetic analyses of nitrogenase assembly in 35S pulse-chased K. pneumoniae pointed to the existence of high-molecular-weight intermediates in MoFe protein assembly and demonstrated the transient binding of newly synthesized NifH and NifDK to GroEL. Overall, these results indicate that GroEL fulfills both regulatory and structural functions in the nif system.

Bacterial Proteins↗