Publications by authors named "John Szpyt"

Maintenance of protein homeostasis degrades with age, contributing to aging-related decline and disease. Previous studies have primarily surveyed transcriptional aging changes. To define the effects of age directly at the protein level, we perform discovery-based proteomics in 10 tissues from 20 C57BL/6J mice, representing both sexes at adult and late midlife ages (8 and 18 months).

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  • Uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) is crucial for regulating energy expenditure in brown and beige fat, but previous loss-of-function models showed issues with the entire energy pathway, making UCP1's role unclear.
  • Researchers identified a specific site (cysteine-253) on UCP1 that, when modified, boosts its activity and created a genetic mouse model lacking this site (UCP1 C253A) to study its effects.
  • UCP1 C253A mice had reduced thermogenesis but did not gain extra fat; instead, they experienced tissue stress and inflammation in males, which was mitigated in females due to higher systemic estrogen levels.
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  • Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a common liver condition linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes, characterized by liver inflammation that contributes to disease progression.
  • The study identifies a pathway regulated by uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) in brown and beige fat that helps combat liver inflammation, operating independently of any impact on obesity itself.
  • Findings suggest that enhancing UCP1 activity could help reduce liver inflammation and improve overall liver health, providing a potential therapeutic approach for managing NAFLD.
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Thousands of interactions assemble proteins into modules that impart spatial and functional organization to the cellular proteome. Through affinity-purification mass spectrometry, we have created two proteome-scale, cell-line-specific interaction networks. The first, BioPlex 3.

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  • Familial neurodegenerative diseases often involve mutations that affect either protein functions or the mechanisms that degrade these proteins, with UBQLN2 being a key factor linked to ALS and frontotemporal dementia.
  • A study using advanced proteomics explored UBQLN2's role and discovered its influence on various physiological pathways, particularly serotonergic signaling, as well as an increase in certain proteasome subunits which might indicate a compensatory mechanism.
  • The research identified specific proteins, including TRIM32 and PEG10, whose levels are linked to UBQLN2 functionality and revealed that while UBQLN2 promotes the degradation of many proteins, it protects the Gag-like protein CXX1B from degradation.
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We report a comprehensive proteogenomics analysis, including whole-genome sequencing, RNA sequencing, and proteomics and phosphoproteomics profiling, of 218 tumors across 7 histological types of childhood brain cancer: low-grade glioma (n = 93), ependymoma (32), high-grade glioma (25), medulloblastoma (22), ganglioglioma (18), craniopharyngioma (16), and atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor (12). Proteomics data identify common biological themes that span histological boundaries, suggesting that treatments used for one histological type may be applied effectively to other tumors sharing similar proteomics features. Immune landscape characterization reveals diverse tumor microenvironments across and within diagnoses.

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  • Oxidation of cysteine thiols by reactive oxygen species (ROS) activates thermogenesis in brown and beige fat tissues, crucial for energy expenditure.
  • The study developed a mass spectrometric method to detect selenium incorporation into proteins, uncovering unexpected selenium use in proteins not conventionally coded for it.
  • Increased cellular levels of organic selenium, particularly through dietary supplementation, enhanced selenium incorporation into the uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1), boosting energy expenditure and offering protection against obesity.
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Mammalian tissues engage in specialized physiology that is regulated through reversible modification of protein cysteine residues by reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS regulate a myriad of biological processes, but the protein targets of ROS modification that drive tissue-specific physiology in vivo are largely unknown. Here, we develop Oximouse, a comprehensive and quantitative mapping of the mouse cysteine redox proteome in vivo.

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Proteins are essential agents of biological processes. To date, large-scale profiling of cell line collections including the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) has focused primarily on genetic information whereas deep interrogation of the proteome has remained out of reach. Here, we expand the CCLE through quantitative profiling of thousands of proteins by mass spectrometry across 375 cell lines from diverse lineages to reveal information undiscovered by DNA and RNA methods.

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Objective: The inappropriate release of free fatty acids from obese adipose tissue stores has detrimental effects on metabolism, but key molecular mechanisms controlling FFA release from adipocytes remain undefined. Although obesity promotes systemic inflammation, we find activation of the inflammation-associated Mitogen Activated Protein kinase ERK occurs specifically in adipose tissues of obese mice, and provide evidence that adipocyte ERK activation may explain exaggerated adipose tissue lipolysis observed in obesity.

Methods And Results: We provide genetic and pharmacological evidence that inhibition of the MEK/ERK pathway in human adipose tissue, mice, and flies all effectively limit adipocyte lipolysis.

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The endogenous metabolite itaconate has recently emerged as a regulator of macrophage function, but its precise mechanism of action remains poorly understood. Here we show that itaconate is required for the activation of the anti-inflammatory transcription factor Nrf2 (also known as NFE2L2) by lipopolysaccharide in mouse and human macrophages. We find that itaconate directly modifies proteins via alkylation of cysteine residues.

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Brown adipose tissue (BAT) mitochondria exhibit high oxidative capacity and abundant expression of both electron transport chain components and uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1). UCP1 dissipates the mitochondrial proton motive force (Δp) generated by the respiratory chain and increases thermogenesis. Here we find that in mice genetically lacking UCP1, cold-induced activation of metabolism triggers innate immune signaling and markers of cell death in BAT.

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The physiology of a cell can be viewed as the product of thousands of proteins acting in concert to shape the cellular response. Coordination is achieved in part through networks of protein-protein interactions that assemble functionally related proteins into complexes, organelles, and signal transduction pathways. Understanding the architecture of the human proteome has the potential to inform cellular, structural, and evolutionary mechanisms and is critical to elucidating how genome variation contributes to disease.

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Brown and beige adipose tissues can dissipate chemical energy as heat through thermogenic respiration, which requires uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1). Thermogenesis from these adipocytes can combat obesity and diabetes, encouraging investigation of factors that control UCP1-dependent respiration in vivo. Here we show that acutely activated thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue is defined by a substantial increase in levels of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS).

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Exercise provides many health benefits, including improved metabolism, cardiovascular health, and cognition. We have shown previously that FNDC5, a type I transmembrane protein, and its circulating form, irisin, convey some of these benefits in mice. However, recent reports questioned the existence of circulating human irisin both because human FNDC5 has a non-canonical ATA translation start and because of claims that many human irisin antibodies used in commercial ELISA kits lack required specificity.

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Protein interactions form a network whose structure drives cellular function and whose organization informs biological inquiry. Using high-throughput affinity-purification mass spectrometry, we identify interacting partners for 2,594 human proteins in HEK293T cells. The resulting network (BioPlex) contains 23,744 interactions among 7,668 proteins with 86% previously undocumented.

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The L-type Ca(2+) channel (dihydropyridine receptor (DHPR) in skeletal muscle acts as the voltage sensor for excitation-contraction coupling. To better resolve the spatial organization of the DHPR subunits (α(1s) or Ca(V)1.1, α(2), β(1a), δ1, and γ), we created transgenic mice expressing a recombinant β(1a) subunit with YFP and a biotin acceptor domain attached to its N- and C- termini, respectively.

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Several studies have suggested that triadin (Tdn) may be a critical component of skeletal EC-coupling. However, using Tdn-null mice we have shown that triadin ablation results in no significant disruption of skeletal EC-coupling. To analyze the role of triadin in EC-coupling signaling here we used whole-cell voltage clamp and simultaneous recording of intracellular Ca²+ release to characterize the retrograde and orthograde signaling between RyR1 and DHPR in cultured myotubes.

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