Biology subjects

de los Rios, V.

Publications and source records attributed to de los Rios, V..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

A TRAPPC2L/TRAPPC11/12/13 subcomplex directs TRAPPIII to autophagy

TRAPP complexes are master regulators of membrane trafficking. TRAPPs are targeted to different locales by pathway-specific subunits decorating a core hetero-heptamer to build TRAPPII (Golgi exit) and TRAPPIII (autophagosomes and ER-Golgi traffic). Metazoan and Arabidopsis TRAPPIII have three components, TRAPPC11/12/13 absent from the budding yeast. We studied TRAPPC11/12/13 in the related ascomycete Aspergillus nidulans, where TRAPPC11 and TRAPPC12 localize to pre-autophagosomes and their ablation impairs autophagy. Two stable subcomplexes containing Tca17/TRAPPC2L coexist, one including the TRAPPII-specific subunits Trs120/Trs130/Trs65 and another including the TRAPPIII-specific subunits TRAPPC11/12/13. Both are recruited to core TRAPP by Tca17/TRAPPC2L, which therefore plays a crucial role by determining the fate of TRAPP. TRAPPIII also comes in two versions, TRAPPIIIa and TRAPPIIIb, both containing Trs85/TRAPPC8, but only TRAPPIIIb containing TRAPPC11/12/13, which target TRAPPIII to autophagy. This study might help characterize potentially pathogenic mutations affecting human TRAPPC11/12/13, facilitating assessment of their functional consequences in a genetically amenable ascomycete.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2021

A novel RAB11-containing adaptor complex anchoring myosin-5 to secretory vesicles

Hyphal fungi grow rapidly by apical extension, providing a notorious example of polarized growth. The continuous supply of secretory vesicles necessary to meet the demands of the extending tip and the long intracellular distances existing between the tip and the basal septum, often localized > 100 {micro}m away from the former, impose the need of efficient networks of intracellular traffic involving exquisite cooperation between microtubule- and actin-mediated transport. In Aspergillus nidulans kinesin-1 conveys secretory vesicles to the hyphal tip, where they are transferred to myosin-5, which focuses them at the growing apex, thereby determining cell shape. This relay mechanism and the central role played by myosin-5 in hyphal morphogenesis suggested that the mechanisms anchoring secretory vesicles to this motor should involve specific adaptor(s) ensuring the robustness of actomyosin-dependent transport. Secretory vesicles are charged with RAB11, a regulatory GTPase that determines the Golgi to post-Golgi identity transition. By using a combination of shotgun proteomics, GST-RAB pull-down assays, in vitro reconstitution experiments, targeted reverse genetics and multidimensional fluorescence microscopy with endogenously tagged proteins we show that RAB11, the master regulator of fungal exocytosis, mediates myosin-5 engagement both by contacting the motor and by recruiting UDS1, a homologue of an as yet uncharacterized Schizosaccharomyces protein upregulated during mitosis, which we demonstrate to be a novel RAB11 effector. Analytical ultracentrifugation determined that UDS1 is an elongated dimer and negative-stain electron microscopy showed that, in agreement, UDS1 is rod-shaped. UDS1 does not contact myosin-5 directly, but rather recruits the coiled-coil HMSV, which bridges RAB11/UDS1 to myosin-5. An HMSV-scaffolded complex containing UDS1 and myosin-5 is present in cells, and a RAB11-UDS1-HMSV complex can be reconstituted in vitro in a RAB nucleotide state-dependent manner. In the absence of UDS1/HMSV the steady state levels of myosin-5 at the apical vesicle supply center diminish markedly, such that microtubule-dependent transport spreading vesicles across the apical dome predominates over apex-focused actin-mediated transport. As a consequence, RAB11 and chitin-synthase B (a cargo of the RAB11 pathway) are not focused at the apex, being distributed instead across the apical dome. Therefore, the RAB11 effector UDS1/HMSV cooperates with the GTPase to adapt secretory vesicles to myosin-5, which is required for the apical targeting of RAB11 cargoes and thus for the normal morphology of the hyphae.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2019

Intercellular transmission of a bacterial cytotoxic prion-like protein in mammalian cells

RepA is a bacterial protein that builds intracellular amyloid oligomers acting as inhibitory complexes of plasmid DNA replication. When carrying a mutation enhancing its amyloidogenesis (A31V), the N-terminal domain (WH1) generates cytosolic amyloid particles that are inheritable within a bacterial lineage. Such amyloids trigger in bacteria a lethal cascade reminiscent to mitochondria impairment in human cells affected by neurodegeneration. To fulfil all the features of a prion-like protein, horizontal (intercellular) transmissibility remains to be demonstrated for RepA-WH1. Since this is experimentally intractable in bacteria, here we transiently expressed in a murine neuroblastoma cell line the soluble, barely cytotoxic RepA-WH1(WT) and assayed its response to co-incubation with in vitro assembled RepA-WH1(A31V) amyloid fibres. In parallel, cells releasing RepA-WH1(A31V) aggregates were co-cultured with human neuroblastoma cells expressing RepA-WH1(WT). Both the assembled fibres and the extracellular RepA-WH1(A31V) aggregates induce, in the cytosol of recipient cells, the formation of cytotoxic amyloid particles. Mass spectrometry analyses of the proteomes of both types of injured cells point to alterations in mitochondria, protein quality triage, signalling and intracellular traffic.\n\nSummary blurbThe horizontal, cell-to-cell spread of a bacterial prion-like protein is shown for the first time in mammalian cells. Amyloid cross-aggregation of distinct variants, and their associated toxicities, follow the same trend found in bacteria, underlining the universality of prion biology.

microbiology↗