Interactions between the Nse3 and Nse4 components of the SMC5-6 complex identify evolutionarily conserved interactions between MAGE and EID Families.

Background: The SMC5-6 protein complex is involved in the cellular response to DNA damage. It is composed of 6-8 polypeptides, of which Nse1, Nse3 and Nse4 form a tight sub-complex. MAGEG1, the mammalian ortholog of Nse3, is the founding member of the MAGE (melanoma-associated antigen) protein family and Nse4 is related to the EID (E1A-like inhibitor of differentiation) family of transcriptional repressors.

Autotaxin delays apoptosis induced by carboplatin in ovarian cancer cells.

Drug resistance remains a barrier to the effective long term treatment of ovarian cancer. We have established an RNAi-based screen to identify genes which confer resistance to carboplatin or paclitaxel. To validate the screen we showed that siRNA interfering with the apoptosis regulators FLIP and Bcl-X(L) conferred sensitivity to paclitaxel and carboplatin respectively.

Transient ectopic expression as a method to detect genes conferring drug resistance.

Ectopic expression provides an alternative to RNAi to conduct functional genomic screens. We have determined whether transient expression can be used to identify genes which confer drug resistance. We constructed a bigenic vector that allows high throughput cloning and which also encodes a red fluorescent protein to monitor transfection.

Identification of the proteins, including MAGEG1, that make up the human SMC5-6 protein complex.

The SMC protein complexes play important roles in chromosome dynamics. The function of the SMC5-6 complex remains unclear, though it is involved in resolution of different DNA structures by recombination. We have now identified and characterized the four non-SMC components of the human complex and in particular demonstrated that the MAGEG1 protein is part of this complex.

The Bcl-2/Bcl-XL family inhibitor ABT-737 sensitizes ovarian cancer cells to carboplatin.

Purpose: The effective treatment of ovarian cancer is hampered by the development of drug resistance, which may be mediated by members of the Bcl-2 family of apoptosis regulators. ABT-737 is a recently described inhibitor of members of this family. We investigated whether this compound could sensitize ovarian cancer cells to chemotherapeutic agents.

The Smc5-Smc6 DNA repair complex. bridging of the Smc5-Smc6 heads by the KLEISIN, Nse4, and non-Kleisin subunits.

Structural maintenance of chromosomes (SMC) proteins play fundamental roles in many aspects of chromosome organization and dynamics. The SMC complexes form unique structures with long coiled-coil arms folded at a hinge domain, so that the globular N- and C-terminal domains are brought together to form a "head." Within the Smc5-Smc6 complex, we previously identified two subcomplexes containing Smc6-Smc5-Nse2 and Nse1-Nse3-Nse4.