In early blood vessel development, trafficking programs, such as those using Rab GTPases, are tasked with delivering vesicular cargo with high spatiotemporal accuracy. However, the function of many ...Rab trafficking proteins remain ill-defined in endothelial tissue; therefore, their relevance to blood vessel development is unknown. Rab35 has been shown to play an enigmatic role in cellular behaviors which differs greatly between tissue-type and organism. Importantly, Rab35 has never been characterized for its potential contribution in sprouting angiogenesis; thus, our goal was to map Rab35's primary function in angiogenesis. Our results demonstrate that Rab35 is critical for sprout formation; in its absence, apicobasal polarity is entirely lost in vitro and in vivo. To determine mechanism, we systematically explored established Rab35 effectors and show that none are operative in endothelial cells. However, we find that Rab35 partners with DENNd1c, an evolutionarily divergent guanine exchange factor, to localize to actin. Here, Rab35 regulates actin polymerization through limiting Rac1 and RhoA activity, which is required to set up proper apicobasal polarity during sprout formation. Our findings establish that Rab35 is a potent brake of actin remodeling during blood vessel development.
Objective
Despite the absolute requirement of Delta/Notch signaling to activate lateral inhibition during early blood vessel development, many mechanisms remain unclear about how this system is ...regulated. Our objective was to determine the involvement of Epsin 15 Homology Domain Containing 2 (EHD2) in delta‐like ligand 4 (Dll4) endocytosis during Notch activation.
Approach and Results
Using both in vivo and in vitro models, we demonstrate that EHD2 is a novel modulator of Notch activation in endothelial cells through controlling endocytosis of Dll4. In vitro, EHD2 localized to plasma membrane‐bound Dll4 and caveolae. Chemical disruption of caveolae complexes resulted in EHD2 failing to organize around Dll4 as well as loss of Dll4 internalization. Reduced Dll4 internalization blunted Notch activation in endothelial cells. In vivo, EHD2 is primarily expressed in the vasculature, colocalizing with junctional marker VE‐cadherin and Dll4. Knockout of EHD2 in zebrafish produced a significant increase in dysmorphic sprouts in zebrafish intersomitic vessels during development and a reduction in downstream Notch signaling.
Conclusions
Overall, we demonstrate that EHD2 is necessary for Dll4 transcytosis and downstream Notch activation.
Mutations in SKP1 and CUL1 (Zhang et. al. Oncol Lett 2018), which encode components of the SKP1-CUL1-F-BOX (SCF) ubiquitin E3-ligase complex, have previously been reported or characterized in AML. ...FBXO11, which encodes the substrate recognizing component, however, has not been studied in AML. We performed whole exome sequencing and RNA-seq on140 clinical AML samples and identified recurrent inactivating mutations in FBXO11. Of the components of the SCF FBXO11 complex, FBXO11 transcript expression is most significantly reduced in AML samples compared to normal. We show that loss of FBXO11 drives leukemogenesis through dysregulation of the novel target, LONP1, by reducing mitochondrial potential and promoting self-renewal.
We found that UPS mutations co-occur with AML1-ETO (RUNX1-RUNX1T1) fusions and RAS mutations. Fbxo11 knockdown in mouse hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPC) cooperated with AML1-ETO to generate serially transplantable AML in mice. FBXO11 depletion in human cord-blood derived CD34+ cells (CD34+ CB), combined with AML1-ETO and a KRAS mutant, promoted stem cell maintenance and myeloid malignancy in a human xenotransplant model.
Mass spectrometry analysis of FLAG-FBXO11 co-immunoprecipitating proteins in K562 cells identified mitochondrial protease, LONP1, as a top target. LONP1 protein expression did not vary with FBXO11 loss or overexpression, suggesting that LONP1 is not a degradation target of the SCF FBXO11complex.
Knockdown of either FBXO11 or LONP1 resulted in myeloid bias in CD34+ CB in vitro, pointing to an activating role of FBXO11 on LONP1. Both FBXO11 and LONP1 depletion reduced mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) in CD34+ CB and myeloid cell lines, aligning with the stemness phenotypes observed with FBXO11 depletion, as long-term hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs) are characterized by low MMP (Mansell et. al. Cell Stem Cell 2021), and disruption of MMP promotes self-renewal in HSCs (Vannini et. al. Nat Commun 2016).
As FBXO11 neddylates p53 to regulate transcription (Abida et. al. J. Biol. Chem 2007), we examined protein neddylation, and detected increased neddylation in immunoprecipitated LONP1 from FLAG-FBXO11-expressing K562 cells. As, neddylation regulates protein activation (Wu et. al. Nature 2005), our findings suggest that FBXO11 neddylation of LONP1 activates LONP1 to maintain mitochondrial function. Consequently, loss of FBXO11 function primes HSPC for self-renewal by reduction of MMP.
To clarify the regulatory relationship between FBXO11 and LONP1, we performed RNA-seq on CD34+ CB cells expressing combinations of shRNAs targeting FBXO11 or LONP1, with overexpression of FLAG -FBXO11 or LONP1. Unsupervised clustering revealed that LONP1-overexpressing samples clustered with controls, suggesting that LONP1 requires modification by FBXO11 for functional effects. Using gene set enrichment analysis, we found that both FBXO11 and LONP1 depletion enriched for HSC and LSC (leukemic stem cell) gene sets. Knockdown of LONP1 reversed the effect of FLAG-FBXO11 overexpression, supporting a model of LONP1 being a downstream mediator of FBXO11 function. Both FBXO11 and LONP1 depletion enriched for a gene set composed of mitochondrial electron transport chain complex (ETC) genes, potentially reflecting a transcriptional response to loss of functional ETC activity, as suggested by accumulation of misfolded ETC proteins with knockdown of LONP1 (Ghosh et. al. Oncogene 2019).
In this work, we demonstrate the leukemogenic effects of FBXO11 loss. We draw a novel connection between the UPS and the mitochondrial protease system with the identification of LONP1 as an FBXO11 target that regulates hematopoiesis.
No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
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