Project description:The Hippo pathway plays a key role in development, organ size control, and tissue homeostasis, and its dysregulation contributes to cancer. The LATS tumor suppressor kinases phosphorylate and inhibit the YAP/TAZ transcriptional co-activators to suppress gene expression and cell growth. Through a screen of marine natural products, we identified microcolin B (MCB) as a Hippo activator. Structure-activity optimization yielded more potent MCB analogs, which led to identification of PITP as the direct molecular targets. We established a critical role of PITP in regulating LATS and YAP. Moreover, we showed that PITP influences the Hippo pathway via cellular PI4P. This study uncovers a previously unrecognized role of PITP in Hippo pathway regulation and as potential cancer therapeutic targets.
Project description:Using this approach, we obtained phospho-proteomic data on the LATS1 interactome from cells treated with two proapoptotic signals: FAS and etoposide, which both activate LATS kinase activity [28].To identify the LATS1 interactome we transiently expressed GFP-LATS1 in HeLa cells, immunoprecipitated GFP-LATS1 with anti-GFP antibodies and identified the associated proteins using mass-spectrometry. Unspecific binding proteins were discarded by comparing with the control GFP IP.
