How cells stop themselves from making busted proteins
2024-10-10
Writer(s): College of Science Communications
Understanding the mechanisms of disease is critical for the creation of targeted medications to fight illness. For this reason, many scientists seek to understand what causes cells to create the defective proteins that are responsible for various diseases. Researchers at Purdue University have discovered a new way that cells normally sense and respond to the production of defective proteins. Jonathan Schlebach, associate professor of biochemistry in the James Tarpo Jr. and Margaret Tarpo Department of Chemistry, and his team have published their discovery in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“Though cells must balance the production of new proteins against the removal of defective proteins in order to stay healthy, the ways that they maintain this balance is not fully clear. We discovered a new way that the protein synthesis machinery (i.e. the ribosome) can detect that it is making defective proteins and then respond by shutting itself down,” Schlebach explained.
“Our investigation shows that this occurs during the production of mutant forms of a channel protein involved in cystic fibrosis, a relatively common genetic disease, and demonstrate that this process impacts the activity of current drugs used in the clinic,” he added.
The research team included co-investigators Lars Plate, associate professor of biological sciences and chemistry, Vanderbilt University, and S. Vamsee Raju, associate professor of medicine, University of Alabama Birmingham School of Medicine.
Purdue researchers who worked on the study include staff scientist Charles Kuntz and Schlebach graduate student Austin Tedman.
Schlebach’s research group studies the molecular mechanisms of evolution and disease, and uses various basic insights from their findings to facilitate drug development and targeting.
“Our findings in the PNAS article may help other groups understand the mechanisms of various other diseases and may help to design better drugs,” Schlebach said.
The work was carried out with support from the Bindley Bioscience Center and the National institutes of Health. (R01GM138845 and R35GM152086)
About Purdue Chemistry
The Tarpo Department of Chemistry is internationally acclaimed for its excellence in chemical education and innovation, boasting two Nobel laureates in organic chemistry, the #1 ranked analytical chemistry program, and a highly successful drug discovery initiative that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.