The hydrophobic motif of ROCK2 requires association with the N-terminal extension for kinase activity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ROCK (Rho-associated coiled-coil kinase) 2 is a member of the AGC kinase family that plays an essential role downstream of Rho in actin cytoskeleton assembly and contractility. The process of ROCK2 activation is complex and requires suppression of an autoinhibitory mechanism that is facilitated by Rho binding. ROCK2 harbours a C-terminal extension within the kinase domain that contains a hydrophobic cluster of phenylalanine and tyrosine residues surrounding a key threonine residue. In growth-factor-stimulated AGC kinases, the hydrophobic motif is important for the transition of the kinase from inactive to active complex and requires phosphorylation of the conserved serine/threonine residue. Less is understood about the contribution that the hydrophobic motif plays in the activation of ROCK, and the role of the hydrophobic motif threonine at position 405. In the present study, we show that this residue of ROCK is essential for substrate phosphorylation and kinase domain dimerization. However, in contrast with the growth-factor-activated AGC kinases, a phosphomimetic residue at position 405 was inhibitory for ROCK2 activity and dimerization. A soluble hydrophobic motif peptide allosterically activated ROCK2 In vitro, but not the equivalent peptide with Asp(405) substitution. Mechanistically, both ROCK2 activity and dimerization were dependent upon the interaction between Thr(405) of the hydrophobic motif and Asp(39) of the N-terminal extension. The reciprocal exchange of these residues was permissive for kinase activity, but dimerization was lost. These results support the rationale for development of small-molecule inhibitors designed to block ROCK activation by selectively interfering with hydrophobic motif-mediated activation-state transition and dimer formation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".