TWIST1 post-translational modification crosstalk in EMT

Project Details

Description

Cancer treatment is currently shifting toward more personalized approaches whose successful application requires knowledge of the global differences in the expression patterns of specific markers of cancer at different stages.

Tumor metastasis is one of the major causes of mortality and morbidity in patients with solid cancers. Recent research strongly suggests that the epithelial-to- mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays a central role during tumor metastasis. EMT is the process by which epithelial cells acquire mesenchymal characteristic such as motility and invasiveness that enable them to invade and metastasize.

There is a growing appreciation that proteins are chemically modified to regulate their cellular functions. The addition and removal of these chemical marks are known as post-translational modifications (PTMS). PTMs have been shown to be a driving force of EMT. However, the knowledge on the regulatory crosstalk between these PTMS as it pertains to EMT is limited.

In the current study we plan to investigate the biochemical and physiological crosstalk between three different PTMs -- lysine methylation, arginine methylation & lysine ubiquitination — in a small protein motif (within 6 residues of each other) of TWISTI, a protein that have been shown to play a vital role in the regulation of EMT. We believe that the successful completion of the proposed research will have broad implications for both basic and translational research and great potential to identify new therapeutic targets or alternative treatment strategies for cancers.

StatusActive
Effective start/end date1/01/19 → …

Funding

  • United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF)

Fingerprint

Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.