A new family of lysine methyltransferases preferentially targets molecular chaperones to orchestrate the functional organization of the human proteome (555.12)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In efforts aimed at identifying and characterizing protein substrats and regulators of all known and putative human methyltransferases using cell compartment affinity purification coupled with mass spectrometry (MCC‐AP‐MS), our laboratory has discovered a novel family of lysine methyltransferases that preferentially target and regulate molecular chaperones. Our results indicate that methylation of molecular chaperones VCP by METTL21D and Hsp70 by METTL21A regulates the activity of both chaperones. In the case of VCP, trimethylation of lysine 315 by METTL21D is stimulated by the addition of the UBX cofactor ASPSCR1, which we show directly interacts with the methyltransferase. This stimulatory effect was lost when we used VCP mutants (R155H, R159G and R191Q) known to cause Inclusion Body Myopathy with Paget's disease of bone and Fronto‐temporal Dementia (IBMPFD) and/or some familial forms of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Lysine 315 falls in proximity to the Walker B motif of VCP's first ATPase/D1 domain. Our results indicate that methylation of this site negatively impacts the ATPase activity of this molecular chaperone. In the case of Hsp70, methylation of lysine 561 by METTL21A was shown to decrease formation of stress granules in response to arsenite treatment, a model that is widely used to study improper protein folding in degenerative disorders. In addition to having implications for the development of therapeutics for degenerative neuromuscular disorders such as ALS and IBMPFD, the discovery of a family of chaperone‐targeting methyltransferases led us to propose the existence of a chaperone posttranslational modification code, that we termed the “chaperone code”, which is at play to orchestrate the proper folding and assembly of protein complexes that make up the human proteome. We will report on our most recent results relating to decryption of the chaperone code and its role in disease. Grant Funding Source : Muscular Dystrophy Association
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".