Title Information
Title
The Mechanism of Dominant-Negative Prion Inhibition Reveals the Crucial Interplay between Protein Misfolding and its Cellular Environment
Name: Personal
Name Part
DiSalvo, Susanne
Role
Role Term: Text
creator
Origin Information
Copyright Date
2012
Physical Description
Extent
xv, 214 p.
digitalOrigin
born digital
Note
Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2012)
Name: Personal
Name Part
Serio, Tricia
Role
Role Term: Text
Director
Name: Personal
Name Part
Chernoff, Yury
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Mowry, Kimberly
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Johnson, Mark
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Peti, Wolfgang
Role
Role Term: Text
Reader
Name: Corporate
Name Part
Brown University. BIOMED: Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry
Role
Role Term: Text
sponsor
Genre (aat)
theses
Abstract
The prion hypothesis provides an explanation for a diverse collection of previously inexplicable phenomena, ranging from the appearance, progression and spread of neurodegenerative disease in mammals to the non-Mendelian inheritance of unique traits in fungi. According to this idea, prion-associated phenotypes arise when a prion protein adopts an alternative physical state and persist when that form self-replicates. This self-replication is mediated by the assembly of alternatively folded prion protein into aggregates, which template the conversion of other forms of the protein to a like state. The inherent ability of prion proteins to harness their conformational flexibility is a central event in establishing distinct phenotypes, but the extension of this process to practice becomes a multi-step endeavor within the context of a living cell. The goal of our work is to understand how protein quality control pathways, prion protein biogenesis, and cell biology all modify prion protein misfolding in vivo to create transmissible changes in physiology. To provide a window into this interplay, our studies have focused on the Sup35/[PSI+] prion of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. As is the case for the mammalian prion protein PrP, a number of mutations in Sup35 have been shown to dominantly inhibit prion propagation by wildtype Sup35 in vivo. The Sup35 mutations map to two regions of the protein that have been previously implicated in prion propagation, a Q/N rich tract and the adjacent oligopeptide repeat region. Through in vivo experiments, we report the mechanism by which two mutations, Q24R, located in the former element, and G58D, located in the latter element, dominantly eliminate the [PSI+] prion. These studies demonstrate that Q24R and G58D induce prion loss specifically by altering the outcome of the interaction between prion aggregates and the molecular chaperone Hsp104 in daughter cells. Remarkably, these mutations perturb different aspects of prion aggregate dynamics to induce these changes and are thus influenced by the conformation of the prion protein and by the cellular response to protein-folding stress. Together, our studies highlight the crucial importance of both protein misfolding pathways and their cellular context in establishing prion phenotypes.
Subject
Topic
chaperone
Subject
Topic
protein misfolding
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1076986")
Topic
Prions
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/808151")
Topic
Amyloid
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1084966")
Topic
Quality control
Record Information
Record Content Source (marcorg)
RPB
Record Creation Date (encoding="iso8601")
20121023
Language
Language Term: Code (ISO639-2B)
eng
Language Term: Text
English
Identifier: DOI
10.7301/Z0862DR6
Access Condition: rights statement (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
In Copyright
Access Condition: restriction on access
Collection is open for research.
Type of Resource (primo)
dissertations