An intein is a polypeptide that interrupts the functional domains of a protein, called the exteins. The intein can facilitate its own excision from the exteins, concomitant with the ligation of the exteins, in a process called protein splicing. The alpha subunit of the ribonucleotide reductase of the extreme thermophile Pyrococcus abyssi is interrupted by three inteins in separate insertion sites. Each intein can facilitate protein splicing when over-expressed in Escherichia coli, with affinity domains serving as the exteins. The influence of the N-terminal flanking residue on the efficiency of splicing is specific to each intein. Each intein has a different downstream nucleophilic residue, and cannot tolerate substitution to a residue of lesser or equal nucleophilicity. The influence of the conserved penultimate His also differs between the inteins.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbrc.2009.06.145 | DOI Listing |
Commun Biol
January 2025
Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, NO36. Sanhao Street, Heping district, Shenyang, China.
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have garnered substantial attention due to their distinctive circular structure and gene regulatory functions, establishing them as a significant class of functional non-coding RNAs in eukaryotes. Studies have demonstrated that circRNAs can interact with RNA-binding proteins (RBPs), which play crucial roles in tumorigenesis, metastasis, and drug response in cancer by influencing gene expression and altering the processes of tumor initiation and progression. This review aims to summarize the recent advances in research on circRNA-protein interactions (CPIs) and discuss the functions and mode of action of CPIs at various stages of gene expression, including transcription, splicing, translation, and post-translational modifications in the context of cancer.
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January 2025
National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Druggability and New Drug Evaluation, National Engineering Research Center for New Drug and Druggability (cultivation), Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of New Drug Design and Evaluation, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, China.
Epitranscriptomic modifications, particularly N6-methyladenosine (mA), are crucial regulators of gene expression, influencing processes such as RNA stability, splicing, and translation. Traditional computational methods for detecting mA from Nanopore direct RNA sequencing (DRS) data are constrained by their reliance on experimentally validated labels, often resulting in the underestimation of modification sites. Here, we introduce pum6a, an innovative attention-based framework that integrates positive and unlabeled multi-instance learning (MIL) to address the challenges of incomplete labeling and missing read-level annotations.
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January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Medicine and Offspring Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
Transcription elongation, especially RNA polymerase II (Pol II) pause-release, is less studied than transcription initiation in regulating gene expression during meiosis. It is also unclear how transcription elongation interplays with transcription initiation. Here, we show that depletion of NKAPL, a testis-specific protein distantly related to RNA splicing factors, causes male infertility in mice by blocking the meiotic exit and downregulating haploid genes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
Université Paris Cité, Institut Cochin, CNRS, INSERM, Paris, France.
Interferon (IFN)-α is the earliest cytokine signature observed in individuals at risk for type 1 diabetes (T1D), but the effect of IFN-α on the antigen repertoire of HLA Class I (HLA-I) in pancreatic β-cells is unknown. Here we characterize the HLA-I antigen presentation in resting and IFN-α-exposed β-cells and find that IFN-α increases HLA-I expression and expands peptide repertoire to those derived from alternative mRNA splicing, protein cis-splicing and post-translational modifications. While the resting β-cell immunopeptidome is dominated by HLA-A-restricted peptides, IFN-α largely favors HLA-B and only marginally upregulates HLA-A, translating into increased HLA-B-restricted peptide presentation and activation of HLA-B-restricted CD8 T cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAndrology
January 2025
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
Objectives: Acetylated tubulin is a hallmark of flagellar stability in spermatozoa, and studies have demonstrated the ability of CDYL to function as a tubulin acetyltransferase in spermatozoa. Of note, germline conditional knockout of Cdyl can lead to asthenoteratozoospermia and infertility in male mice. However, the role of CDYL gene in human fertility remains uncharacterized.
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