Publications by authors named "Harshitha Santhosh Kumar"

Article Synopsis
  • Proteostasis, or protein homeostasis, is thought to be crucial for managing the buildup of harmful proteins like amyloid beta (Aβ) in age-related neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
  • Researchers tested this idea using a mouse model with a mutation (Rps9 D95N) that leads to an unstable protein environment, but surprisingly, this disruption did not affect Aβ buildup or Tau phosphorylation levels.
  • The study suggests that even in a misfolding-prone environment, protein homeostasis might not significantly influence the accumulation of pathogenic Aβ or related neuropathology in Alzheimer's disease.
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Age-related neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) are associated with the aggregation and propagation of specific pathogenic protein species (e.g., Aβ, α-synuclein).

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Proteostasis is a challenge for cellular organisms, as all known protein synthesis machineries are error-prone. Here we show by cell fractionation and microscopy studies that misfolded proteins formed in the endoplasmic reticulum can become associated with and partly transported into mitochondria, resulting in impaired mitochondrial function. Blocking the endoplasmic reticulum-mitochondria encounter structure (ERMES), but not the mitochondrial sorting and assembly machinery (SAM) or the mitochondrial surveillance pathway components Msp1 and Vms1, abrogated mitochondrial sequestration of ER-misfolded proteins.

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Translation fidelity is the limiting factor in the accuracy of gene expression. With an estimated frequency of 10, errors in mRNA decoding occur in a mostly stochastic manner. Little is known about the response of higher eukaryotes to chronic loss of ribosomal accuracy as per an increase in the random error rate of mRNA decoding.

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Infectious diseases due to multidrug-resistant pathogens, particularly carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CREs), present a major and growing threat to human health and society, providing an urgent need for the development of improved potent antibiotics for their treatment. We describe the design and development of a new class of aminoglycoside antibiotics culminating in the discovery of propylamycin. Propylamycin is a 4'-deoxy-4'-alkyl paromomycin whose alkyl substituent conveys excellent activity against a broad spectrum of ESKAPE pathogens and other Gram-negative infections, including CREs, in the presence of numerous common resistance determinants, be they aminoglycoside modifying enzymes or rRNA methyl transferases.

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