Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UNIPROT:P62988 (Ubiquitin)
 4,326 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The intracellular class of proteins that bind the interleukin-2 suppressing drugs (cyclosporin, tacrolimus, and sirolimus) are called immunophilins. It is believed that the drugs do not act directly on T cells to cause immunosuppression. Instead, there is evidence that drug-immunophilin complexes are responsible for the therapeutic effect. In this work, evidence is presented that ubiquitin is an immunophilin. Ubiquitin is a highly conserved protein essential to an important pathway that targets proteins for proteolysis. The interaction of these drugs could cause accelerated proteolysis of a key protein for T-cell upregulation or could cause the inhibition of proteolysis of a T-cell suppressor. It was also shown that when ubiquitin is complexed with tacrolimus, the complex inhibits calcineurin phosphatase, and it is known that immunosuppression with these drugs occurs concurrently with a decrease in the activity of this enzyme. The discovery of ubiquitin as an immunophilin has opened many new avenues to explore in relation to the effects of these drugs.
 ...
PMID:Protein ubiquitin is an immunophilin. 1180 19

Cardiac hypertrophy is a major cause of human morbidity and mortality. Although much is known about the pathways that promote hypertrophic responses, mechanisms that antagonize these pathways have not been as clearly defined. Atrogin-1, also known as muscle atrophy F-box, is an F-box protein that inhibits pathologic cardiac hypertrophy by participating in a ubiquitin ligase complex that triggers degradation of calcineurin, a factor involved in promotion of pathologic hypertrophy. Here we demonstrated that atrogin-1 also disrupted Akt-dependent pathways responsible for physiologic cardiac hypertrophy. Our results indicate that atrogin-1 does not affect the activity of Akt itself, but serves as a coactivator for members of the Forkhead family of transcription factors that function downstream of Akt. This coactivator function of atrogin-1 was dependent on its ubiquitin ligase activity and the deposition of polyubiquitin chains on lysine 63 of Foxo1 and Foxo3a. Transgenic mice expressing atrogin-1 in the heart displayed increased Foxo1 ubiquitylation and upregulation of known Forkhead target genes concomitant with suppression of cardiac hypertrophy, while mice lacking atrogin-1 displayed the opposite physiologic phenotype. These experiments define a role for lysine 63-linked ubiquitin chains in transcriptional coactivation and demonstrate that atrogin-1 uses this mechanism to disrupt physiologic cardiac hypertrophic signaling through its effects on Forkhead transcription factors.
 ...
PMID:Atrogin-1 inhibits Akt-dependent cardiac hypertrophy in mice via ubiquitin-dependent coactivation of Forkhead proteins. 1796 79

Calcineurin acts as a calcium-activated phosphatase that dephosphorylates various substrates, including members of the nuclear factor of activated T cells (NFAT) family, to trigger their nuclear translocation and transcriptional activity. However, the detailed mechanism regulating the recruitment of NFATs to calcineurin remains poorly understood. Here, we report that calcineurin A (CNA), encoded by PPP3CB or PPP3CC, is constitutively ubiquitinated on lysine 327, and this polyubiquitin chain is rapidly removed by ubiquitin carboxyl-terminal hydrolase 16 (USP16) in response to intracellular calcium stimulation. The K29-linked ubiquitination of CNA impairs NFAT recruitment and transcription of NFAT-targeted genes. USP16 deficiency prevents calcium-triggered deubiquitination of CNA in a manner consistent with defective maintenance and proliferation of peripheral T cells. T cell-specific USP16 knockout mice exhibit reduced severity of experimental autoimmune encephalitis and inflammatory bowel disease. Our data reveal the physiological function of CNA ubiquitination and its deubiquitinase USP16 in peripheral T cells. Notably, our results highlight a critical mechanism for the regulation of calcineurin activity and a novel immunosuppressive drug target for the treatment of autoimmune diseases.
 ...
PMID:USP16-mediated deubiquitination of calcineurin A controls peripheral T cell maintenance. 3113 81