Published in Cancer research
MLK4 is a member of the mixed-lineage family of kinases that regulate the JNK, p38, and ERK kinase signaling pathways. MLK4 mutations have been identified in various human cancers, including frequently in colorectal cancer, where their function and pathobiological importance have been uncertain. In this study, we assessed the functional consequence...
Published in Cell research
A recent report, solving the structure of a Parkin-phosphoubiquitin complex, greatly advances the understanding of the Parkin activation mechanism.
Published in Cell
Histidine phosphorylation (pHis) is well studied in bacteria; however, its role in mammalian signaling remains largely unexplored due to the lack of pHis-specific antibodies and the lability of the phosphoramidate (P-N) bond. Both imidazole nitrogens can be phosphorylated, forming 1-phosphohistidine (1-pHis) or 3-phosphohistidine (3-pHis). We have ...
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
In the middle of the 20th century, animal tumor viruses were heralded as possible models for understanding human cancer. By the mid-1970s, the molecular basis by which tumor viruses transform cells into a malignant state was beginning to emerge as the first viral genomic sequences were reported and the proteins encoded by their transforming genes w...
Published in The Journal of biological chemistry
The DAXX transcriptional repressor was originally associated with apoptotic cell death. However, recent evidence that DAXX represses several tumor suppressor genes, including the DAPK1 and DAPK3 protein kinases, and is up-regulated in many cancers argues that a pro-survival role may predominate in a cancer context. Here, we report that DAXX has pot...
Published in Cell
Protein kinase C (PKC) isozymes have remained elusive cancer targets despite the unambiguous tumor promoting function of their potent ligands, phorbol esters, and the prevalence of their mutations. We analyzed 8% of PKC mutations identified in human cancers and found that, surprisingly, most were loss of function and none were activating. Loss-of-f...
Published in Molecular cell
The protein LC3 is indispensible for the cellular recycling process of autophagy and plays critical roles during cargo recruitment, autophagosome biogenesis, and completion. Here, we report that LC3 is phosphorylated at threonine 50 (Thr(50)) by the mammalian Sterile-20 kinases STK3 and STK4. Loss of phosphorylation at this site blocks autophagy by...
Published in Cell cycle (Georgetown, Tex.)
Published in Cell
The poor clinical outcome in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is attributed to intrinsic chemoresistance and a growth-permissive tumor microenvironment. Conversion of quiescent to activated pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) drives the severe stromal reaction that characterizes PDA. Here, we reveal that the vitamin D receptor (VDR) is expressed...
Published in Nature communications
The HECT ubiquitin E3 ligase WWP-1 is a positive regulator of lifespan in response to dietary restriction (DR) in Caenorhabditis elegans. However, substrates of WWP-1 for ubiquitylation in the DR pathway have not yet been identified. Here we identify the C. elegans Krüppel-like factor, KLF-1, as an essential and specific regulator of DR-induced lon...
