Published in The EMBO Journal
Antinuclear antibodies are a hallmark feature of generalized autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus and systemic sclerosis. However, the processes underlying the loss of tolerance against nuclear self-constituents remain largely unresolved. Using mice deficient in lymphotoxin and Hox11, we report that approximately 25% of mice ...
Published in The EMBO journal
Motor proteins and microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) play important roles in cellular transport, regulation of shape and polarity of cells. While motor proteins generate motility, MAPs are thought to stabilize the microtubule tracks. However, the proteins also interfere with each other, such that MAPs are able to inhibit transport of vesicles ...
Published in The EMBO journal
Kinesin-1 is a processive molecular motor transporting cargo along microtubules. Inside cells, several motors and microtubule-associated proteins compete for binding to microtubules. Therefore, the question arises how processive movement of kinesin-1 is affected by crowding on the microtubule. Here we use total internal reflection fluorescence micr...
Published in The EMBO journal
The contractile tail of bacteriophage T4 is a molecular machine that facilitates very high viral infection efficiency. Its major component is a tail sheath, which contracts during infection to less than half of its initial length. The sheath consists of 138 copies of the tail sheath protein, gene product (gp) 18, which surrounds the central non-con...
Published in The EMBO Journal
Planar cell polarity (PCP) controls the orientation of cells within tissues and the polarized outgrowth of cellular appendages. So far, six PCP core proteins including the transmembrane proteins Frizzled (Fz), Strabismus (Stbm) and Flamingo (Fmi) have been identified. These proteins form asymmetric PCP domains at apical junctions of epithelial cell...
Published in The EMBO journal
Cell fate decisions during haematopoiesis are governed by lineage-specific transcription factors, such as RUNX1, SCL/TAL1, FLI1 and C/EBP family members. To gain insight into how these transcription factors regulate the activation of haematopoietic genes during embryonic development, we measured the genome-wide dynamics of transcription factor asse...
Published in The EMBO Journal
Obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and dyslipidemia result from metabolic alterations including the defective conversion, storage and utilization of nutrients, but the central mechanisms that regulate this process of nutrient partitioning remain elusive. As positive regulators of feeding behaviour, agouti-related protein (AgRP) producing neu...
Published in The EMBO journal
Centrosomes are cellular organelles that have a major role in the spatial organisation of the microtubule network. The centrosome is comprised of two centrioles that duplicate only once during the cell cycle, generating a procentriole from each mature centriole. Despite the essential roles of centrosomes, the detailed structural mechanisms involved...
Published in The EMBO journal
Importin alpha is well known as an adaptor that functions with Importin beta in the nuclear import of proteins containing specific nuclear localization signals (NLSs). We show here that either an excess or a lack of Importin alpha blocks nuclear envelope (NE) assembly in vitro, and our data suggest that soluble Importin alpha functions in NE assemb...
Published in The EMBO journal
Endocrine release of insulin principally controls glucose homeostasis. Nutrient-induced exocytosis of insulin granules from pancreatic β-cells involves ion channels and mobilization of Ca(2+) and cyclic AMP (cAMP) signalling pathways. Whole-animal physiology, islet studies and live-β-cell imaging approaches reveal that ablation of the kinase/phosph...
