The proposed work will address novel mechanisms of regulation of cell migration, building on two fundamental paradigms that have been established through my independent work since 2004. First, I demonstrated the essential biological role of protein arginylation and demonstrated that this posttranslational modification regulates multiple proteins in vivo and critically affects cell migration. Second, I discovered that during cell migration the coding sequence, rather than the amino acid sequence, drives functional distinction between homologous protein isoforms by regulating their rates of translation, posttranslational modifications, and function. This work, published in a number of high impact journals (including 18 peer reviewed publications in the last 5 years) have established my lab as a leader in the field and the group uniquely suited to perform the proposed studies. We will combine these two innovative concepts into an integrated study that will uncover novel mechanisms of the regulation of cell migration by mRNA coding sequence and arginylation. We hypothesize that: (1) mRNA- mediated regulation of N-terminal arginylation of beta actin uniquely regulates actin function during cell migration by facilitating actin polymerization at the cell leading edge; (2) ATE1's activity and targeting to specific protein substrates and sites is regulated locally at the leading edge and/or globally throughout the cell at the onset of cell migration and during changes in the migratory and metabolic state of the cell; and (3) coding sequence coupled to arginylation constitute a novel fundamental mechanism that regulates homologous protein isoforms involved in cell migration. Longer-term, our work will extend our cell migration- related studies into a global concept for future studies that will determine the role of coding sequence and arginylation in global protein regulation.
Abnormalities in cell migration lead to severe developmental defects and contribute to numerous disease states, including heart disease and cancer ? the two leading causes of death in the United States. The current proposal will delineate the mechanistic basis for novel regulation of cell migration by posttranslational arginylation, with the goal of enabling the development of new therapeutics that regulate aberrant cell migration and adhesion in these disease states.
| Pavlyk, Iuliia; Leu, Nicolae A; Vedula, Pavan et al. (2018) Rapid and dynamic arginylation of the leading edge ?-actin is required for cell migration. Traffic 19:263-272 |
| Wang, Junling; Pejaver, Vikas Rao; Dann, Geoffrey P et al. (2018) Target site specificity and in vivo complexity of the mammalian arginylome. Sci Rep 8:16177 |
| Vedula, Pavan; Kashina, Anna (2018) The makings of the 'actin code': regulation of actin's biological function at the amino acid and nucleotide level. J Cell Sci 131: |
| Wang, Junling; Pavlyk, Iuliia; Vedula, Pavan et al. (2017) Arginyltransferase ATE1 is targeted to the neuronal growth cones and regulates neurite outgrowth during brain development. Dev Biol 430:41-51 |
