• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.175-186
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• 2011

Amyloid fibrils have long been known to be the well known ${\alpha}$-helix to ${\beta}$-sheet transition characterizing the conversion of cellular to scrapie forms of the prion protein. A very short sequence of Yeast prion-like protein, GNNQQNY (SupN), is responsible for aggregation that induces diseases. KSI-fused tandem repeats of SupN vector are constructed and used to express SupN peptide in Escherichia coli (E.Coli). A method for a production, purification, and cleavage of tandem repeats of recombinant isotopically enriched SupN in E. coli is described. This method yields as much as 20 mg/L of isotope-enriched fusion proteins in minimal media. Synthetic SupN peptides and $^{13}C$ Gly labeled SupN peptides are studied by Congo Red staining, Birefringence and transmission electron microscopy to characterize amyloid fibril formation. To get a better understanding of aggregation-structure relationship of 7 residues of Yeast prion-like protein, the change of a conformational structure will be studied by $^{13}C$ solid-state nmr spectroscopy as powder of both amorphous and fibrillar forms.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.91-96
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• 2015

Prions are proteinaceous infectious particles that cause neurodegenerative diseases, such as scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. Although the detailed process, regarding the abnormal conversion of prion proteins (PrP), remains to be fully elucidated, a number of environmental factors appear to affect the formation of misfolded PrP, termed PrP^Sc. Because oceanic algae contain mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs), which exhibit cellular defensive activities under a variety of stress conditions, we investigated the level of PrP^Sc in prion-infected neuroblastoma cells using mycosporine-glycine, porphyra-334 and shinorine. When judged by the level of protease-resistant PrP^Sc in western blots, porphyra-334 and shinorine increased the level of PrP^Sc in cells, but mycosporine-glycine did not. The current results indicate that the MAAs tested in this study enhance the formation of PrP^Sc.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.195-207
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• 2006

Stem cells are the primordial, initial cells which usually divide asymmetrically giving rise to on the one hand self-renewals and on the other hand progenitor cells with potential for differentiation. Zygote (fertilized egg), with totipotency, deserves the top-ranking stem cell - he totipotent stem cell (TSC). Both the ICM (inner cell mass) taken from the 6 days-old human blastocyst and ESC (embryonic stem cell) derived from the in vitro cultured ICM have slightly less potency for differentiation than the zygote, and are termed pluripotent stem cells. Stem cells in the tissues and organs of fetus, infant, and adult have highly reduced potency and committed to produce only progenitor cells for particular tissues. These tissue-specific stem cells are called multipotent stem cells. These tissue-specific/committed multipotent stem cells, when placed in altered environment other than their original niche, can yield cells characteristic of the altered environment. These findings are certainly of potential interest from the clinical, therapeutic perspective. The controversial terminology 'somatic stem cell plasticity' coined by the stem cell community seems to have been proved true. Followings are some of the recent knowledges related to the stem cell. Just as the tissues of our body have their own multipotent stem cells, cancerous tumor has undifferentiated cells known as cancer stem cell (CSC). Each time CSC cleaves, it makes two daughter cells with different fate. One is endowed with immortality, the remarkable ability to divide indefinitely, while the other progeny cell divides occasionally but lives forever. In the cancer tumor, CSC is minority being as few as 3-5% of the tumor mass but it is the culprit behind the tumor-malignancy, metastasis, and recurrence of cancer. CSC is like a master print. As long as the original exists, copies can be made and the disease can persist. If the CSC is destroyed, cancer tumor can't grow. In the decades-long cancer therapy, efforts were focused on the reducing of the bulk of cancerous growth. How cancer therapy is changing to destroy the origin of tumor, the CSC. The next generation of treatments should be to recognize and target the root cause of cancerous growth, the CSC, rather than the reducing of the bulk of tumor, Now the strategy is to find a way to identify and isolate the stem cells. The surfaces of normal as well as the cancer stem cells are studded with proteins. In leukaemia stem cell, for example, protein CD 34 is identified. In the new treatment of cancer disease it is needed to look for protein unique to the CSC. Blocking the stem cell's source of nutrients might be another effective strategy. The mystery of sternness of stem cells has begun to be deciphered. ESC can replicate indefinitely and yet retains the potential to turn into any kind of differentiated cells. Polycomb group protein such as Suz 12 repress most of the regulatory genes which, activated, are turned to be developmental genes. These protein molecules keep the ESC in an undifferentiated state. Many of the regulator genes silenced by polycomb proteins are also occupied by such ESC transcription factors as Oct 4, Sox 2, and Nanog. Both polycomb and transcription factor proteins seem to cooperate to keep the ESC in an undifferentiated state, pluripotent, and self-renewable. A normal prion protein (PrP) is found throughout the body from blood to the brain. Prion diseases such as mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) are caused when a normal prion protein misfolds to give rise to PrP$^{SC}$ and assault brain tissue. Why has human body kept such a deadly and enigmatic protein? Although our body has preserved the prion protein, prion diseases are of rare occurrence. Deadly prion diseases have been intensively studied, but normal prion problems are not. Very few facts on the benefit of prion proteins have been known so far. It was found that PrP was hugely expressed on the stem cell surface of bone marrow and on the cells of neural progenitor, PrP seems to have some function in cell maturation and facilitate the division of stem cells and their self-renewal. PrP also might help guide the decision of neural progenitor cell to become a neuron.

• BMB Reports
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• v.42 no.7
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• pp.444-449
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• 2009

Different neurodegenerative disorders like prion disease, is caused by protein misfolding conformers. Reverse-transfected cytosolic prion protein (PrP) and PrP expressed in the cytosol have been shown to be neurotoxic. To investigate the possible mechanism of neurotoxicity due to accumulation of PrP in cytosol, a PrP mutant lacking the signal and GPI (CytoPrP) was introduced into the SH-SY5Y cell. MTT and trypan blue assays indicated that the viability of cells expressing CytoPrP was remarkably reduced after treatment of MG-132. Obvious apoptosis phenomena were detected in the cells accumulated with CytoPrP, including loss of mitochondrial transmembrane potential, increase of caspase-3 activity, more annexin V/PI-double positive-stained cells and reduced Bcl-2 level. Moreover, DNA fragmentation and TUNEL assays also revealed clear evidences of late apoptosis in the cells accumulated CytoPrP. These data suggest that the accumulation of CytoPrP in cytoplasm may trigger cell apoptosis, in which mitochondrial relative apoptosis pathway seems to play critical role.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.1023-1031
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• 2017

The conformational change of cellular prion protein ($PrP^C$) to its misfolded counterpart, termed $PrP^{Sc}$, is mediated by a hypothesized cellular cofactor. This cofactor is believed to interact directly with certain amino acid residues of $PrP^C$. When these are mutated into cationic amino acid residues, $PrP^{Sc}$ formation and prion replication halt in a dominant negative (DN) manner, presumably due to strong binding of the cofactor to mutated $PrP^C$, designated as DN PrP mutants. Previous studies demonstrated that plasminogen and its kringle domains bind to PrP and accelerate $PrP^{Sc}$ generation. In this study, in vitro binding analysis of kringle domains of plasminogen to Q167R DN mutant PrP (PrPQ167R) was performed in parallel with the wild type (WT) and Q218K DN mutant PrP (PrPQ218K). The binding affinity of PrPQ167R was higher than that of WT PrP, but lower than that of PrPQ218K. Scatchard analysis further indicated that, like PrPQ218K and WT PrP, PrPQ167R interaction with plasminogen occurred at multiple sites, suggesting cooperativity in this interaction. Competitive binding analysis using $\small{L}$-lysine or $\small{L}$-arginine confirmed the increase of the specificity and binding affinity of the interaction as PrP acquired DN mutations. Circular dichroism spectroscopy demonstrated that the recombinant PrPs used in this study retained the ${\alpha}$-helix-rich structure. The ${\alpha}$-helix unfolding study revealed similar conformational stability for WT and DN-mutated PrPs. This study provides an additional piece of biochemical evidence concerning the interaction of plasminogen with DN mutant PrPs.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.17-23
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• 2018

Studies on the interactions of amyloidogenic proteins with trace metals, such as copper, have indicated that the metal ions perform a critical function in the early oligomerization process. Herein, we investigate the effects of Cu(II) ions on the active sequence regions of amyloidogenic proteins using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and collision induced dissociation tandem MS (CID-MS/MS). We chose three amyloidogenic peptides NNQQNY, LYQLEN, and VQIVYK from yeast prion like protein Sup35, insulin chain A, and tau protein, respectively. [Cu-peptide] complexes for all three peptides were observed in the mass spectra. The mass spectra also show that increasing Cu(II) concentrations decrease the population of existing peptide oligomers. The tandem mass spectrum of NNQQNY shows preferential binding for the N-terminal region. All three peptides are likely to appear to be in a Cu-monomer-monomer (Cu-M-M) structure instead of a monomer-Cu-monomer (M-Cu-M) structure.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.32-37
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• 2019

The ${\pi}-{\pi}$ interactions of the peptide-dimer and peptide-trimer complexes were investigated in the (VQIVYK + LYQLEN) and (VQIVYK + NNQQNY) mixing solutions. The results showed that tyrosine (Y) residues were critical in the formation of hetero peptide-dimers and -trimers during the early oligomerization process. We used collision-induced dissociation (CID) along with electrospray ionization mass spectroscopy (ESI-MS) to obtain the structural information of the hetero-dimers and -trimers. We chose three amyloidogenic peptides-VQIVYK, NNQQNY, and LYQLEN-from tau protein, yeast prion-like protein Sup35, and insulin chain A, respectively. Hetero-dimer, -trimer, -tetramer, and -pentamer complexes were observed in the mass spectra. The tandem mass spectrum of the hetero-dimer and hetero-trimer showed two different fragmentation patterns (covalent and non-covalent bond dissociation). Y-Y interaction structures were also proposed for the hetero-dimer and -trimer complexes.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.148-156
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• 2013

The $PrP^C$ is expressed in many types of immune cells including monocytes and macrophages, however, its function in immune regulation remains to be elucidated. In the present study, we examined a role for $PrP^C$ in regulation of monocyte function. Specifically, the effect of a soluble form of $PrP^C$ was studied in human monocytes. A recombinant fusion protein of soluble human $PrP^C$ fused with the Fc portion of human IgG1 (designated as soluble $PrP^C$-Fc) bound to the cell surface of monocytes, induced differentiation to macrophage-like cells, and enhanced adherence and phagocytic activity. In addition, soluble $PrP^C$-Fc stimulated monocytes to produce pro-inflammatory cytokines such as $TNF-{\alpha}$, $IL-1{\beta}$, and IL-6. Both ERK and $NF-{\kappa}B$ signaling pathways were activated in soluble $PrP^C$-treated monocytes, and inhibitors of either pathway abrogated monocyte adherence and cytokine production. Taken together, we conclude that soluble $PrP^C$-Fc enhanced adherence, phagocytosis, and cytokine production of monocytes via activation of the ERK and $NF-{\kappa}B$ signaling pathways.