Project description:Polypyrimidine tract-binding protein 1 (PTBP1) is a multi-functional RNA-binding protein that is aberrantly overexpressed in glioma. PTBP1 and its brain-specific homologue polypyrimidine tract-binding protein 2 (PTBP2) regulate neural precursor cell differentiation. However, the overlapping and non-overlapping target transcripts involved in this process are still unclear. To determine why PTBP1 and not PTBP2 would promote glial cell-derived tumours, both PTBP1 and PTBP2 were knocked down in the human glioma cell lines U251 and LN229 to determine the role of these proteins in cell proliferation, migration, and adhesion. Surprisingly, removal of both PTBP1 and PTBP2 slowed cell proliferation, with the double knockdown having no additive effects. Decreased expression of both proteins individually and in combination inhibited cell migration and increased adhesion of cells to fibronectin and vitronectin. A global survey of differential exon expression was performed following PTBP1 knockdown in U251 cells using the Affymetrix Exon Array to identify PTBP1-specific splicing targets that enhance gliomagenesis. In the PTBP1 knockdown, previously determined targets were unaltered in their splicing patterns. A single gene, RTN4 (Nogo) had significantly enhanced inclusion of exon 3 when PTBP1 was removed. Overexpression of the splice isoform containing exon 3 decreased cell proliferation to a similar degree as the removal of PTBP1. These results provide the first evidence that RNA-binding proteins affect the invasive and rapid growth characteristics of glioma cell lines. Its actions on proliferation appear to be mediated, in part, through alternative splicing of RTN4.
Project description:RNA binding proteins play an important role in regulating alternative pre-mRNA splicing and in turn cellular gene expression. Polypyrimidine tract binding proteins, PTBP1 and PTBP2, are paralogous RNA binding proteins that play a critical role in the process of neuronal differentiation and maturation; changes in the concentration of PTBP proteins during neuronal development direct splicing changes in many transcripts that code for proteins critical for neuronal differentiation. How the two related proteins regulate different sets of neuronal exons is unclear. The distinct splicing activities of PTBP1 and PTBP2 can be recapitulated in an in vitro splicing system with the differentially regulated N1 exon of the c-src pre-mRNA. Here, we conducted experiments under these in vitro splicing conditions to identify PTBP1 and PTBP2 interacting partner proteins. Our results highlight that both PTBPs interact with proteins that participate in chromatin remodeling and transcription regulation. Our data reveal that PTBP1 interacts with many proteins involved in mRNA processing including splicing regulation while PTBP2 does not. Our results also highlight enzymes that can serve as potential "writers" and "erasers" in adding chemical modifications to the PTB proteins. Overall, our study highlights important differences in protein-protein interactions between the PTBP proteins under splicing conditions and supports a role for post-translational modifications in dictating their distinct splicing activities.
Project description:Alternative splicing patterns are regulated by RNA binding proteins that assemble onto each pre-mRNA to form a complex RNP structure. The polypyrimidine tract binding protein, PTB, has served as an informative model for understanding how RNA binding proteins affect spliceosome assembly and how changes in the expression of these proteins can control complex programs of splicing in tissues. In this review, we describe the mechanisms of splicing regulation by PTB and its function, along with its paralog PTBP2, in neuronal development.
Project description:Families of alternative splicing regulators often contain multiple paralogs presumed to fulfill different functions. Polypyrimidine tract binding proteins PTBP1 and PTBP2 reprogram developmental pre-mRNA splicing in neurons, but how their regulatory networks differ is not understood. To compare their targeting, we generated a knockin allele that conditionally expresses PTBP1. Bred to a Ptbp2 knockout, the transgene allowed us to compare the developmental and molecular phenotypes of mice expressing only PTBP1, only PTBP2, or neither protein in the brain. This knockin Ptbp1 rescued a forebrain-specific, but not a pan-neuronal, Ptbp2 knockout, demonstrating both redundant and distinct roles for the proteins. Many developmentally regulated exons exhibited different sensitivities to PTBP1 and PTBP2. Nevertheless, the two paralogs displayed similar RNA binding across the transcriptome, indicating that their differential targeting does not derive from their RNA interactions, but from possible different cofactor interactions.
Project description:While dysregulation of RNA splicing has been recognized as an emerging target for cancer therapy, the functional significance of RNA splicing and individual splicing factors in brain tumors is poorly understood. Here, we identify SON as a master regulator that activates PTBP1-mediated oncogenic splicing while suppressing RBFOX2-mediated non-oncogenic neuronal splicing in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). SON is overexpressed in GBM patients and SON knockdown causes failure in intron removal from the PTBP1 transcript, resulting in PTBP1 downregulation and inhibition of its downstream oncogenic splicing. Furthermore, SON forms a complex with hnRNP A2B1 and antagonizes RBFOX2, which leads to skipping of RBFOX2-targeted cassette exons, including the PTBP2 neuronal exon. SON knockdown inhibits proliferation and clonogenicity of GBM cells in vitro and significantly suppresses tumor growth in orthotopic xenografts in vivo. Collectively, our study reveals that SON-mediated RNA splicing is a GBM vulnerability, implicating SON as a potential therapeutic target in brain tumors.
Project description:The fidelity of RNA splicing is maintained by a network of factors, but the molecular mechanisms that govern this process have yet to be fully elucidated. We previously found that TDP-43, an RNA-binding protein implicated in neurodegenerative disease, utilizes UG microsatellites to repress nonconserved cryptic exons and prevent their incorporation into mRNA. Here, we report that two well-characterized splicing factors, polypyrimidine tract-binding protein 1 (PTBP1) and polypyrimidine tract-binding protein 2 (PTBP2), are also nonconserved cryptic exon repressors. In contrast to TDP-43, PTBP1 and PTBP2 utilize CU microsatellites to repress both conserved tissue-specific exons and nonconserved cryptic exons. Analysis of these conserved splicing events suggests that PTBP1 and PTBP2 repression is titrated to generate the transcriptome diversity required for neuronal differentiation. We establish that PTBP1 and PTBP2 are members of a family of cryptic exon repressors.
Project description:Splicing factors are key players in the regulation of alternative splicing of pre-mRNAs. Overexpression of splicing factors, including SRSF3, has been strongly linked with oncogenesis. However, the mechanisms behind their overexpression remain largely unclear. Autoregulation is a common mechanism to maintain relative stable expression levels of splicing factors in cells. SRSF3 regulates its own expression by enhancing the inclusion of an alternative exon 4 with an in-frame stop codon. We found that the inclusion of SRSF3 exon 4 is impaired in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) cells. PTBP1 and PTBP2 bind to an exonic splicing suppressor in exon 4 and inhibit its inclusion, which results in overexpression of full length functional SRSF3. Overexpression of SRSF3, in turn, promotes PTBP2 expression. Our results suggest a novel mechanism for the overexpression of oncogenic splicing factor via impairing autoregulation in cancer cells.
Project description:Nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) employ multiple domains separated by linker regions to incorporate substrates into natural products. During synthesis, substrates are covalently tethered to carrier proteins that translocate between catalytic partner domains. The molecular parameters that govern translocation and associated linker remodeling remain unknown. Here, we used NMR to characterize the structure, dynamics, and invisible states of a peptidyl carrier protein flanked by its linkers. We showed that the N-terminal linker stabilizes and interacts with the protein core while modulating dynamics at specific sites involved in post-translational modifications and/or domain interactions. The results detail the molecular communication between peptidyl carrier proteins and their linkers and could guide efforts in engineering NRPSs to obtain new pharmaceuticals.
Project description:RNA binding proteins play an important role in regulating alternative pre-mRNA splicing and in turn cellular gene expression. Many of these RNA binding proteins occur as gene families with members sharing a high degree of primary structure identity and domain organization yet have tissue-specific expression patterns and regulate different sets of target exons. How highly similar members in a gene family can exert different splicing outcomes is not well understood. We conducted mass spectrometry analysis of post-translational phosphorylation and acetylation modifications for two paralogs of the polypyrimidine tract binding protein family, PTBP1 and PTBP2, to discover modifications that occur in splicing reaction mixtures and to identify discrete modifications that may direct their different splicing activities. We find that PTBP1 and PTBP2 have many distinct phosphate modifications located in the unstructured N-terminal, linker 1, and linker 2 regions. We find that the two proteins have many overlapping acetate modifications in the RNA recognition motifs (RRMs) with a few distinct sites in PTBP1 RRM2 and RRM3. Our data also reveal that lysine residues in the nuclear localization sequence of PTBP2 are acetylated. Collectively, our results highlight important differences in post-translational modifications between the paralogs and suggest a role for them in the differential splicing activity of PTBP1 and PTBP2.
Project description:Postsynaptic density protein 95 (PSD-95) is essential for synaptic maturation and plasticity. Although its synaptic regulation has been widely studied, the control of PSD-95 cellular expression is not understood. We found that Psd-95 was controlled post-transcriptionally during neural development. Psd-95 was transcribed early in mouse embryonic brain, but most of its product transcripts were degraded. The polypyrimidine tract binding proteins PTBP1 and PTBP2 repressed Psd-95 (also known as Dlg4) exon 18 splicing, leading to premature translation termination and nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. The loss of first PTBP1 and then of PTBP2 during embryonic development allowed splicing of exon 18 and expression of PSD-95 late in neuronal maturation. Re-expression of PTBP1 or PTBP2 in differentiated neurons inhibited PSD-95 expression and impaired the development of glutamatergic synapses. Thus, expression of PSD-95 during early neural development is controlled at the RNA level by two PTB proteins whose sequential downregulation is necessary for synapse maturation.