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Showing 1-10 of 14 resultsMetastasis depends upon cancer cell growth and survival within the metastatic niche. Tumors which remodel their glycocalyces, by overexpressing bulky glycoproteins like mucins, exhibit a higher predisposition to metastasize, but the role of mucins in oncogenesis remains poorly understood. Here we report that a bulky glycocalyx promotes the expansion of disseminated tumor cells in vivo by fostering integrin adhesion assembly to permit G1 cell cycle progression. We engineered tumor cells to display glycocalyces of various thicknesses by coating them with synthetic mucin-mimetic glycopolymers. Cells adorned with longer glycopolymers showed increased metastatic potential, enhanced cell cycle progression, and greater levels of integrin-FAK mechanosignaling and Akt signaling in a syngeneic mouse model of metastasis. These effects were mirrored by expression of the ectodomain of cancer-associated mucin MUC1. These findings functionally link mucinous proteins with tumor aggression, and offer a new view of the cancer glycocalyx as a major driver of disease progression.
Macrophages continuously survey their environment in search of pathogens or apoptotic corpses or debris. Targets intended for clearance expose ligands that initiate their phagocytosis ("eat me" signals), while others avoid phagocytosis by displaying inhibitory ligands ("don't eat me" signals). We report that such ligands can be obscured by the glycosaminoglycans and glycoproteins that coat pathogenic as well as malignant phagocytic targets. In addition, a reciprocal barrier of self-synthesized or acquired glycocalyx components on the macrophage surface shrouds phagocytic receptors, curtailing their ability to engage particles. The coating layers of macrophages and their targets hinder phagocytosis by both steric and electrostatic means. Their removal by enzymatic means is shown to markedly enhance phagocytic efficiency. In particular, we show that the removal of mucins, which are overexpressed in cancer cells, facilitates their clearance. These results shed light on the physical barriers that modulate phagocytosis, which have been heretofore underappreciated.
Densely O-glycosylated mucin domains are found in a broad range of cell surface and secreted proteins, where they play key physiological roles. In addition, alterations in mucin expression and glycosylation are common in a variety of human diseases, such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, and inflammatory bowel diseases. These correlations have been challenging to uncover and establish because tools that specifically probe mucin domains are lacking. Here, we present a panel of bacterial proteases that cleave mucin domains via distinct peptide- and glycan-based motifs, generating a diverse enzymatic toolkit for mucin-selective proteolysis. By mutating catalytic residues of two such enzymes, we engineered mucin-selective binding agents with retained glycoform preferences. StcEE447D is a pan-mucin stain derived from enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli that is tolerant to a wide range of glycoforms. BT4244E575A derived from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron is selective for truncated, asialylated core 1 structures commonly associated with malignant and premalignant tissues. We demonstrated that these catalytically inactive point mutants enable robust detection and visualization of mucin-domain glycoproteins by flow cytometry, Western blot, and immunohistochemistry. Application of our enzymatic toolkit to ascites fluid and tissue slices from patients with ovarian cancer facilitated characterization of patients based on differences in mucin cleavage and expression patterns.
Although purification of biotinylated molecules is highly efficient, identifying specific sites of biotinylation remains challenging. We show that anti-biotin antibodies enable unprecedented enrichment of biotinylated peptides from complex peptide mixtures. Live-cell proximity labeling using APEX peroxidase followed by anti-biotin enrichment and mass spectrometry yielded over 1,600 biotinylation sites on hundreds of proteins, an increase of more than 30-fold in the number of biotinylation sites identified compared to streptavidin-based enrichment of proteins.
Studying posttranslational modifications classically relies on experimental strategies that oversimplify the complex biosynthetic machineries of living cells. Protein glycosylation contributes to essential biological processes, but correlating glycan structure, underlying protein, and disease-relevant biosynthetic regulation is currently elusive. Here, we engineer living cells to tag glycans with editable chemical functionalities while providing information on biosynthesis, physiological context, and glycan fine structure. We introduce a non-natural substrate biosynthetic pathway and use engineered glycosyltransferases to incorporate chemically tagged sugars into the cell surface glycome of the living cell. We apply the strategy to a particularly redundant yet disease-relevant human glycosyltransferase family, the polypeptide N-acetylgalactosaminyl transferases. This approach bestows a gain-of-chemical-functionality modification on cells, where the products of individual glycosyltransferases can be selectively characterized or manipulated to understand glycan contribution to major physiological processes.
Expansion microscopy (ExM) is an innovative approach to achieve super-resolution images without using super-resolution microscopes, based on the physical expansion of the sample. The advent of ExM has unlocked the detail of super-resolution images for a broader scientific circle, lowering the cost and entry skill requirements for the field. One of its branches, ultrastructure expansion microscopy (U-ExM), has become popular among research groups studying apicomplexan parasites, including the acute stage of Toxoplasma gondii infection. Here, we show that the chronic cyst-forming stage of Toxoplasma, however, resists U-ExM expansion, impeding precise protein localization. We then solve the in vitro cyst's resistance to denaturation required for successful U-ExM. As the cyst's main structural protein CST1 contains a mucin domain, we added an enzymatic digestion step using the pan-mucinase StcE prior to the expansion protocol. This allowed full expansion of the cysts in fibroblasts and primary neuronal cell culture without disrupting immunofluorescence analysis of parasite proteins. Using StcE-enhanced U-ExM, we clarified the localization of the GRA2 protein, which is important for establishing a normal cyst, observing GRA2 granules spanning across the CST1 cyst wall. The StcE-U-ExM protocol allows accurate pinpointing of proteins in the bradyzoite cyst, which will greatly facilitate investigation of the underlying biology of cyst formation and its vulnerabilities.
All multicellular systems produce and dynamically regulate extracellular matrices (ECM) that play important roles in both biochemical and mechanical signaling. Though the spatial arrangement of these extracellular assemblies is critical to their biological functions, visualization of ECM structure is challenging, in part because the biomolecules that compose the ECM are difficult to fluorescently label individually and collectively. Here, we present a cell-impermeable small molecule fluorophore, termed Rhobo6, that turns on and red shifts upon reversible binding to glycans. Given that most ECM components are densely glycosylated, the dye enables wash-free visualization of ECM, in systems ranging from in vitro substrates to in vivo mouse mammary tumors. Relative to existing techniques, Rhobo6 provides a broad substrate profile, superior tissue penetration, nonperturbative labeling, and negligible photobleaching. This work establishes a straightforward method for imaging the distribution of ECM in live tissues and organisms, lowering barriers for investigation of extracellular biology.
The majority of therapies that target individual proteins rely on specific activity-modulating interactions with the target protein—for example, enzyme inhibition or ligand blocking. However, several major classes of therapeutically relevant proteins have unknown or inaccessible activity profiles and so cannot be targeted by such strategies. Protein-degradation platforms such as proteolysis-targeting chimaeras (PROTACs)1,2 and others (for example, dTAGs3, Trim-Away4, chaperone-mediated autophagy targeting5 and SNIPERs6) have been developed for proteins that are typically difficult to target; however, these methods involve the manipulation of intracellular protein degradation machinery and are therefore fundamentally limited to proteins that contain cytosolic domains to which ligands can bind and recruit the requisite cellular components. Extracellular and membrane-associated proteins—the products of 40% of all protein-encoding genes7—are key agents in cancer, ageing-related diseases and autoimmune disorders8, and so a general strategy to selectively degrade these proteins has the potential to improve human health. Here we establish the targeted degradation of extracellular and membrane-associated proteins using conjugates that bind both a cell-surface lysosome-shuttling receptor and the extracellular domain of a target protein. These initial lysosome-targeting chimaeras, which we term LYTACs, consist of a small molecule or antibody fused to chemically synthesized glycopeptide ligands that are agonists of the cation-independent mannose-6-phosphate receptor (CI-M6PR). We use LYTACs to develop a CRISPR interference screen that reveals the biochemical pathway for CI-M6PR-mediated cargo internalization in cell lines, and uncover the exocyst complex as a previously unidentified—but essential—component of this pathway. We demonstrate the scope of this platform through the degradation of therapeutically relevant proteins, including apolipoprotein E4, epidermal growth factor receptor, CD71 and programmed death-ligand 1. Our results establish a modular strategy for directing secreted and membrane proteins for lysosomal degradation, with broad implications for biochemical research and for therapeutics.
Background: It is unclear whether long-term seizure outcomes in children are similar to those in adult epilepsy surgery patients. Objective: To determine 5-year outcomes and antiepilepsy drug (AED) use in pediatric epilepsy surgery patients from a single institution. Methods: The cohort consisted of children younger than 18 years of age whose 5-year outcome data would have been available by 2010. Comparisons were made between patients with and without 5-year data (n = 338), patients with 5-year data for seizure outcome (n = 257), and seizure-free patients on and off AEDs (n = 137). Results: Five-year data were available from 76% of patients. More seizure-free patients with focal resections for hippocampal sclerosis and tumors lacked 5-year data compared with other cases. Of those with 5-year data, 53% were continuously seizure free, 18% had late seizure recurrence, 3% became seizure free after initial failure, and 25% were never seizure free. Patients were more likely to be continuously seizure free if their surgery was performed during the period 2001 to 2005 (68%) compared with surgery performed from 1996 to 2000 (61%), 1991 to 1995 (36%), and 1986 to 1990 (46%). More patients had 1 or fewer seizures per month in the late seizure recurrence (47%) compared with the not seizure-free group (20%). Four late deaths occurred in the not seizure-free group compared with 1 in the seizure-free group. Of patients who were continuously seizure free, 55% were not taking AEDs, and more cortical dysplasia patients (74%) had stopped taking AEDs compared with hemimegalencephaly patients (18%). Conclusion: In children, 5-year outcomes improved over 20 years of clinical experience. Our results are similar to those of adult epilepsy surgery patients despite mostly extratemporal and hemispheric operations for diverse developmental etiologies.
Cells bend their plasma membranes into highly curved forms to interact with the local environment, but how shape generation is regulated is not fully resolved. Here, we report a synergy between shape-generating processes in the cell interior and the external organization and composition of the cell-surface glycocalyx. Mucin biopolymers and long-chain polysaccharides within the glycocalyx can generate entropic forces that favor or disfavor the projection of spherical and finger-like extensions from the cell surface. A polymer brush model of the glycocalyx successfully predicts the effects of polymer size and cell-surface density on membrane morphologies. Specific glycocalyx compositions can also induce plasma membrane instabilities to generate more exotic undulating and pearled membrane structures and drive secretion of extracellular vesicles. Together, our results suggest a fundamental role for the glycocalyx in regulating curved membrane features that serve in communication between cells and with the extracellular matrix.