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Publication Open Access Acute inhibition of centriolar satellite function and positioning reveals their functions at the primary cilium(Public Library of Science, 2020) Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Karalar, Elif Nur Fırat; Faculty Member; Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; College of Sciences; N/A; N/A; N/A; 206349Centriolar satellites are dynamic, membraneless granules composed of over 200 proteins. They store, modify, and traffic centrosome and primary cilium proteins, and help to regulate both the biogenesis and some functions of centrosomes and cilium. In most cell types, satellites cluster around the perinuclear centrosome, but their integrity and cellular distribution are dynamically remodeled in response to different stimuli, such as cell cycle cues. Dissecting the specific and temporal functions and mechanisms of satellites and how these are influenced by their cellular positioning and dynamics has been challenging using genetic approaches, particularly in ciliated and proliferating cells. To address this, we developed a chemical-based trafficking assay to rapidly and efficiently redistribute satellites to either the cell periphery or center, and fuse them into stable clusters in a temporally controlled way. Induced satellite clustering at either the periphery or center resulted in antagonistic changes in the pericentrosomal levels of a subset of proteins, revealing a direct and selective role for their positioning in protein targeting and sequestration. Systematic analysis of the interactome of peripheral satellite clusters revealed enrichment of proteins implicated in cilium biogenesis and mitosis. Importantly, induction of peripheral satellite targeting in ciliated cells revealed a function for satellites not just for efficient cilium assembly but also in the maintenance of steady-state cilia and in cilia disassembly by regulating the structural integrity of the ciliary axoneme. Finally, perturbing satellite distribution and dynamics inhibited their mitotic dissolution, and mitotic progression was perturbed only in cells with centrosomal satellite clustering. Collectively, our results for the first time showed a direct link between satellite functions and their pericentrosomal clustering, suggested new mechanisms underlying satellite functions during cilium assembly, and provided a new tool for probing temporal satellite functions in different contextsPublication Open Access CLIC4 and CLIC1 bridge plasma membrane and cortical actin network for a successful cytokinesis(Life Science Alliance LLC, 2020) Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Kagiali, Zeynep Cansu Üretmen; Şanal, Erdem; Değirmenci, Beste Senem; Mollaoğlu, Gürkan; Saner, Nazan; Master Student; Faculty Member; Researcher; Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Koç University Research Center for Translational Medicine (KUTTAM) / Koç Üniversitesi Translasyonel Tıp Araştırma Merkezi (KUTTAM); Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; College of Sciences; N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; 105301; 227757CLIC4 and CLIC1 are members of the well-conserved chloride intracellular channel proteins (CLICs) structurally related to glutathione-S-transferases. Here, we report new roles of CLICs in cytokinesis. At the onset of cytokinesis, CLIC4 accumulates at the cleavage furrow and later localizes to the midbody in a RhoA-dependent manner. The cell cycle-dependent localization of CLIC4 is abolished when its glutathione S-transferase activity-related residues (C35A and F37D) are mutated. Ezrin, anillin, and ALIX are identified as interaction partners of CLIC4 at the cleavage furrow and midbody. Strikingly, CLIC4 facilitates the activation of ezrin at the cleavage furrow and reciprocally inhibition of ezrin activation diminishes the translocation of CLIC4 to the cleavage furrow. Furthermore, knockouts of CLIC4 and CLIC1 cause abnormal blebbing at the polar cortex and regression of the cleavage furrow at late cytokinesis leading to multinucleated cells. We conclude that CLIC4 and CLIC1 function together with ezrin where they bridge plasma membrane and actin cytoskeleton at the polar cortex and cleavage furrow to promote cortical stability and successful completion of cytokinesis in mammalian cells.
Publication Metadata only Computational analysis of the binding free energy of H3K9ME3 peptide to the tandem tudor domains of JMJD2A(IEEE, 2010) N/A; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Computer Engineering; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; N/A; Keskin, Özlem; Gürsoy, Attila; Erman, Burak; Özboyacı, Musa; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; PhD Student; Department of Computer Engineering; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; College of Engineering; College of Engineering; College of Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; 26605; 8745; 179997; N/AJMJD2A is a histone lysine demethylase enzyme which plays a prominent role in the development of prostate and esophageal squamous cancers. Consisting of a JmjC, a JmjN, two PHD and two tandem tudor domains, JMJD2A recognizes and binds to four different methylated histone peptides: H3K4me3, H4K20me3, H4K20me2 and H3K9me3, via its tudor domains. Of the four histone peptides, only recognition of the H3K4me3 and H4K20me3 by JMJD2A-tudor has been identified. In this study, we investigated the recognition of trimethylated H3K9 by the tandem tudor domains of JMJD2A. Using the molecular dynamics simulations, we performed normal mode and molecular mechanics - Poisson Boltzmann / generalized born - surface area (MM-PB/GB-SA) analysis to find the entropic and enthalpic contributions to binding free energy respectively. We showed that binding of the ligand is mainly driven by favorable van der Waals interactions made after complexation. Our findings suggest that, upon complex formation, H3K9me3 peptide adopts a similar binding mode and the same orientation with H3K4me3 peptide.Publication Metadata only Determination of the correspondence between mobility (rigidity) and conservation of the interface residues(IEEE, 2010) N/A; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Computer Engineering; N/A; Keskin, Özlem; Gürsoy, Attila; Makinacı, Gözde Kar; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; PhD Student; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Computer Engineering; College of Engineering; College of Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; 26605; 8745; N/AHot spots at protein interfaces may play specific functional roles and contribute to the stability of the protein complex. These residues are not homogeneously distributed along the protein interfaces; rather they are clustered within locally tightly packed regions forming a network of interactions among themselves. Here, we investigate the organization of computational hot spots at protein interfaces. A list of proteins whose free and bound forms exist is examined. Inter-residue distances of the interface residues are compared for both forms. Results reveal that there exist rigid block regions at protein interfaces. More interestingly, these regions correspond to computational hot regions. Hot spots can be determined with an average positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.73 and average sensitivity value of 0.70 for seven protein complexes.Publication Open Access Distinct chemical composition and enzymatic treatment induced human endothelial cells survival in acellular ovine aortae(BioMed Central, 2021) Rahbarghazi, Reza; Saberianpour, Shirin; Delkhosh, Aref; Amini, Hassan; Hassanpour, Mehdi; Heidarzadeh, Morteza; Sokullu, Emel; PhD Student; Faculty Member; Koç University Research Center for Translational Medicine (KUTTAM) / Koç Üniversitesi Translasyonel Tıp Araştırma Merkezi (KUTTAM); Graduate School of Health Sciences; School of Medicine; N/A; 163024Objective: the current experiment aimed to assess the impact of detergents such as 3% Triton X-100, 1% peracetic acid, 1% Tween-20, and 1% SDS in combination with Trypsin–EDTA on acellularization of ovine aortae after 7 days. Results: Hematoxylin–Eosin staining showed an appropriate acellularization rate in ovine aortae, indicated by a lack of cell nuclei in the tunica media layer. DAPI staining confirmed the lack of nuclei in the vascular wall after being exposed to the combination of chemical and enzymatic solutions. Verhoeff-Van Gieson staining showed that elastin fibers were diminished in acellular samples compared to the control group while collagen stands were unchanged. CCK-8 survival assay showed enhanced viability in human umbilical vein endothelial cells 5 days after being cultured on decellularized samples compared to the cells cultured on a plastic surface (p < 0.05). SEM imaging showed flattening of endothelial cells on the acellular surface.Publication Open Access Human CRY1 variants associate with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder(American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), 2020) Onat, O. Emre; Kars, M. Ece; Bilguvar, Kaya; Wu, Yiming; Özhan, Ayşe; Trusso, M. Allegra; Goracci, Arianna; Fallerini, Chiara; Renieri, Alessandra; Casanova, Jean Laurent; Itan, Yuval; Atbaşoğlu, Cem E.; Saka, Meram C.; Özçelik, Tayfun; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Gül, Şeref; Aydın, Cihan; Başak, Ayşe Nazlı; Kavaklı, İbrahim Halil; Researcher; Researcher; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Koç University Research Center for Translational Medicine (KUTTAM) / Koç Üniversitesi Translasyonel Tıp Araştırma Merkezi (KUTTAM); Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; College of Engineering; College of Sciences; N/A; 214696; 1512; 40319Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common and heritable phenotype frequently accompanied by insomnia, anxiety, and depression. Here, using a reverse phenotyping approach, we report heterozygous coding variations in the core circadian clock gene cryptochrome 1 in 15 unrelated multigenerational families with combined ADHD and insomnia. The variants led to functional alterations in the circadian molecular rhythms, providing a mechanistic link to the behavioral symptoms. One variant, CRY1Δ11 c.1657+3A>C, is present in approximately 1% of Europeans, therefore standing out as a diagnostic and therapeutic marker. We showed by exome sequencing in an independent cohort of patients with combined ADHD and insomnia that 8 of 62 patients and 0 of 369 controls carried CRY1Δ11. Also, we identified a variant, CRY1Δ6 c.825+1G>A, that shows reduced affinity for BMAL1/CLOCK and causes an arrhythmic phenotype. Genotype-phenotype correlation analysis revealed that this variant segregated with ADHD and delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD) in the affected family. Finally, we found in a phenome-wide association study involving 9438 unrelated adult Europeans that CRY1Δ11 was associated with major depressive disorder, insomnia, and anxiety. These results defined a distinctive group of circadian psychiatric phenotypes that we propose to designate as "circiatric" disorders.Publication Metadata only Interaction prediction of PDZ domains using a machine learning approach(IEEE, 2010) N/A; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Computer Engineering; N/A; Keskin, Özlem; Gürsoy, Attila; Kalyoncu, Sibel; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Master Student; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Computer Engineering; College of Engineering; College of Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; 26605; 8745; N/AProtein interaction domains play crucial roles in many complex cellular pathways. PDZ domains are one of the most common protein interaction domains. Prediction of binding specificity of PDZ domains by a computational manner could eliminate unnecessary, time-consuming experiments. In this study, interactions of PDZ domains are predicted by using a machine learning approach in which only primary sequences of PDZ domains and peptides are used. In order to encode feature vectors for each interaction, trigram frequencies of primary sequences of PDZ domains and corresponding peptides are calculated. After construction of numerical interaction dataset, we compared different classifiers and ended up with Random Forest (RF) algorithm which gave the top performance. We obtained very high prediction accuracy (91.4%) for binary interaction prediction which outperforms all previous similar methods.Publication Open Access Phylogeny, genetic diversity and population structure of Brandt's hedgehog Paraechinus hypomelas, inferred from the mitochondrial evidences(Arak University, 2019) Kashani, Ehsan; Rezaei, Hamid Reza; Khorasani, Nematolah; Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Researcher; Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; Graduate School of Sciences and EngineeringThe Brandt's hedgehog Paraechinus hypomelas (Brandt 1836), is a relatively widespread species which range from Arabian Peninsula and Iran, through southern areas of Central Asia to western South Asia. The phylogenetic position of the species tat is little known in Iran, although it has been studied in different parts of its distributional range. To this aim, during 2017-2018, the species was sampled in a non-invasive method (n=34) from the southeast of Iran. Genetic variation and polymorphic sites were determined from cytb (1120bp). Totally 22 haplotypes and haplotype diversity ranging from 0.859 to 1.099 were detected from cytb. The average value of the nucleotide differences among the cytb sequences was calculated as 4.68. The Tamija's D test (-1.88) and Fu's FS test (-15.73) revealed negative value, indicating significantly deviations from neutrality which both indicate of recent population expansion. Investigation on pairwise differences, mismatch distributions, indicated of past expansions (SSD= 0.0033, P value = 0.38). The Iran south east population constitute a phylogenetic clade which is completely distinct from other known lineages in the species distributional range. Relatively high amount of the haplotype and nucleotide diversity can be related to the high effective population of the species, the rate of gene flow among the populations and also the sudden expansion in the past.Publication Metadata only Reaction path analysis for demethylation process of histone tail lysine residues(IEEE, 2010) N/A; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; N/A; Keskin, Özlem; Erman, Burak; Karasulu, Bora; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Master Student; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; College of Engineering; College of Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; 26605; 179997; N/AHistone proteins control many crucial cell regulatory processes post-translational modifications. Among these modifications, methylation is recently shown to be reversible with the discovery of Lysine-specific Demethylase (LSD1) enzyme. As many studies have showed the relation of some cancer-type and other diseases with the abnormalities in the balance of methylation/demethylation, drug molecule design based on the information gained from reaction path analysis becomes very useful. In this paper, a chemically-consistent reaction mechanism is proposed for the demethylation of histone tail lysine residues and the reaction path analysis of this mechanism is carried out. Potential and free energy profiles of the system, which does not include the residues of the enzyme, are calculated with semi-empirical and quantum mechanical (QM) methods. These results create a fundamental basis for further analysis of the demethylation process with enzyme and/or inhibitor molecules available in the literature.Publication Metadata only Structural properties of hub proteins(IEEE, 2010) Ozkirimli, Elif; N/A; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Keskin, Özlem; Çukuroğlu, Engin; Faculty Member; PhD Student; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; College of Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; 26605; N/AProtein-protein interaction networks are scale free networks with a few hub proteins that have many interaction partners in the network. In this work, we examined the flexibility of the hubs by using a structural perspective and compared date hubs, which bind their partners at different times, and party hubs, which bind their partners simultaneously, with non hub proteins. The flexibility of the proteins is evaluated using temperature factors. Party hubs are found to be more flexible than date hubs, which in turn are more flexible than non-hub proteins. These may explain how a hub interacts with its partners specifically.