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    Regulation of the tumor-suppressor function of the class III phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase complex by ubiquitin and SUMO
    (Basel : MDPI, 2014) Reidick, Christina; El Magraoui, Fouzi; Meyer, Helmut E.; Stenmark, Harald; Platta, Harald W.
    The occurrence of cancer is often associated with a dysfunction in one of the three central membrane-involution processes—autophagy, endocytosis or cytokinesis. Interestingly, all three pathways are controlled by the same central signaling module: the class III phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K-III) complex and its catalytic product, the phosphorylated lipid phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate (PtdIns3P). The activity of the catalytic subunit of the PI3K-III complex, the lipid-kinase VPS34, requires the presence of the membrane-targeting factor VPS15 as well as the adaptor protein Beclin 1. Furthermore, a growing list of regulatory proteins associates with VPS34 via Beclin 1. These accessory factors define distinct subunit compositions and thereby guide the PI3K-III complex to its different cellular and physiological roles. Here we discuss the regulation of the PI3K-III complex components by ubiquitination and SUMOylation. Especially Beclin 1 has emerged as a highly regulated protein, which can be modified with Lys11-, Lys48- or Lys63-linked polyubiquitin chains catalyzed by distinct E3 ligases from the RING-, HECT-, RBR- or Cullin-type. We also point out other cross-links of these ligases with autophagy in order to discuss how these data might be merged into a general concept.
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    Autophagy-related deubiquitinating enzymes involved in health and disease
    (Basel : MDPI, 2015) El Magraoui, Fouzi; Reidick, Christina; Meyer, Hemut E.; Platta, Harald W.
    Autophagy is an evolutionarily-conserved process that delivers diverse cytoplasmic components to the lysosomal compartment for either recycling or degradation. This involves the removal of protein aggregates, the turnover of organelles, as well as the elimination of intracellular pathogens. In this situation, when only specific cargoes should be targeted to the lysosome, the potential targets can be selectively marked by the attachment of ubiquitin in order to be recognized by autophagy-receptors. Ubiquitination plays a central role in this process, because it regulates early signaling events during the induction of autophagy and is also used as a degradation-tag on the potential autophagic cargo protein. Here, we review how the ubiquitin-dependent steps of autophagy are balanced or counteracted by deubiquitination events. Moreover, we highlight the functional role of the corresponding deubiquitinating enzymes and discuss how they might be involved in the occurrence of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases or infection with pathogenic bacteria.
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    FYCO1 Increase and Effect of Arimoclomol–Treatment in Human VCP–Pathology
    (Basel : MDPI, 2022) Guettsches, Anne-Katrin; Meyer, Nancy; Zahedi, René P.; Evangelista, Teresinha; Muentefering, Thomas; Ruck, Tobias; Lacene, Emmanuelle; Heute, Christoph; Gonczarowska-Jorge, Humberto; Schoser, Benedikt; Krause, Sabine; Hentschel, Andreas; Vorgerd, Matthias; Roos, Andreas
    Dominant VCP–mutations cause a variety of neurological manifestations including inclusion body myopathy with early–onset Paget disease and frontotemporal dementia 1 (IBMPFD). VCP encodes a ubiquitously expressed multifunctional protein that is a member of the AAA+ protein family, implicated in multiple cellular functions ranging from organelle biogenesis to ubiquitin–dependent protein degradation. The latter function accords with the presence of protein aggregates in muscle biopsy specimens derived from VCP–patients. Studying the proteomic signature of VCP–mutant fibroblasts, we identified a (pathophysiological) increase of FYCO1, a protein involved in autophagosome transport. We confirmed this finding applying immunostaining also in muscle biopsies derived from VCP–patients. Treatment of fibroblasts with arimoclomol, an orphan drug thought to restore physiologic cellular protein repair pathways, ameliorated cellular cytotoxicity in VCP–patient derived cells. This finding was accompanied by increased abundance of proteins involved in immune response with a direct impact on protein clearaqnce as well as by elevation of pro–survival proteins as unravelled by untargeted proteomic profiling. Hence, the combined results of our study reveal a dysregulation of FYCO1 in the context of VCP–etiopathology, highlight arimoclomol as a potential drug and introduce proteins targeted by the pre–clinical testing of this drug in fibroblasts.