KLHL41 stabilizes skeletal muscle sarcomeres by nonproteolytic ubiquitination
- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, United States
Abstract
Maintenance of muscle function requires assembly of contractile proteins into highly organized sarcomeres. Mutations in Kelch-like protein 41 (KLHL41) cause nemaline myopathy, a fatal muscle disorder associated with sarcomere disarray. We generated KLHL41 mutant mice, which display lethal disruption of sarcomeres and aberrant expression of muscle structural and contractile proteins, mimicking the hallmarks of the human disease. We show that KLHL41 is poly-ubiquitinated and acts, at least in part, by preventing aggregation and degradation of Nebulin, an essential component of the sarcomere. Furthermore, inhibition of KLHL41 poly-ubiquitination prevents its stabilization of NEB, suggesting a unique role for ubiquitination in protein stabilization. These findings provide new insights into the molecular etiology of nemaline myopathy and reveal a mechanism whereby KLHL41 stabilizes sarcomeres and maintains muscle function by acting as a molecular chaperone. Similar mechanisms for protein stabilization likely contribute to the actions of other Kelch proteins.
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Funding
National Institutes of Health (HL130253 HL077439 DK099653 AR067294)
- Eric N Olson
Welch Foundation (1-0025)
- Eric N Olson
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (2015-100829) of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (NIH OLAW Assurance Number D16-00296 ).
Copyright
© 2017, Ramirez-Martinez et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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KLHL41 stabilizes skeletal muscle sarcomeres by nonproteolytic ubiquitination
eLife 6:e26439.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.26439
