Blocking transmembrane219 protein signaling inhibits autophagy and restores normal cell death

PLoS One. 2019 Jun 20;14(6):e0218091. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218091. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Autophagy plays a vital role in tumor therapy and survival of dormant tumor cells. Here we describe a novel function of a protein known as Transmembrane 219 (TM219) as an autophagy activator. TM219 is a small membrane protein expressed in all known human tissues except the thymus. We used biochemical approaches to identify calmodulin and calmodulin dependent protein kinase II as a part of TM219 protein complex. Then, we employed in vitro reconstitution system and fluorescence anisotropy to study the requirements of TM219 to bind calmodulin in vitro. We also used this system to study the effects of a synthetic peptide derived from the sequence of the short cytoplasmic tail of TM219 (SCTT) on calmodulin-TM219 receptor interactions. We conjugated SCTT peptide with a pH Low Insertion peptide (pHLIP) for optimal cellular delivery. We finally tested the effects of SCTT-pHLIP on triple negative human breast cancer cells in three dimension culture. Our data defined a novel function of TM219 protein and an efficient approach to inhibit it.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Autophagy*
  • Calcium / metabolism
  • Calmodulin / metabolism
  • Cell Death*
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Cell Proliferation
  • Chlorocebus aethiops
  • Cytoplasm / metabolism
  • Endoplasmic Reticulum / metabolism
  • Fluorescence Polarization
  • Humans
  • Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 3 / metabolism
  • Membrane Proteins / metabolism*
  • Protein Binding
  • Signal Transduction*
  • Triple Negative Breast Neoplasms / metabolism
  • Triple Negative Breast Neoplasms / pathology
  • Vero Cells

Substances

  • Calmodulin
  • IGFBP3 protein, human
  • Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 3
  • Membrane Proteins
  • Calcium

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.