Genome sequencing of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in conjunction with a medical school human anatomy course.

Even in cases where there is no obvious family history of disease, genome sequencing may contribute to clinical diagnosis and management. Clinical application of the genome has not yet become routine, however, in part because physicians are still learning how best to utilize such information. As an educational research exercise performed in conjunction with our medical school human anatomy course, we explored the potential utility of determining the whole genome sequence of a patient who had died following a clinical diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

Caenorhabditis elegans HOPS and CCZ-1 mediate trafficking to lysosome-related organelles independently of RAB-7 and SAND-1.

As early endosomes mature, the SAND-1/CCZ-1 complex acts as a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) for RAB-7 to promote the activity of its effector, HOPS, which facilitates late endosome-lysosome fusion and the consumption of AP-3-containing vesicles. We show that CCZ-1 and the HOPS complex are essential for the biogenesis of gut granules, cell type-specific, lysosome-related organelles (LROs) that coexist with conventional lysosomes in Caenorhabditis elegans intestinal cells. The HOPS subunit VPS-18 promotes the trafficking of gut granule proteins away from lysosomes and functions downstream of or in parallel to the AP-3 adaptor.

A Caenorhabditis elegans model of orotic aciduria reveals enlarged lysosome-related organelles in embryos lacking umps-1 function.

Gut granules are cell type-specific lysosome-related organelles found within the intestinal cells of Caenorhabditis elegans. To investigate the regulation of lysosome-related organelle size, we screened for C. elegans mutants with substantially enlarged gut granules, identifying alleles of the vacuolar-type H(+)-ATPase and uridine-5'-monophosphate synthase (UMPS)-1.