A liquid-like organelle at the root of motile ciliopathy

  1. Ryan L Huizar
  2. Chanjae Lee
  3. Alexander A Boulgakov
  4. Amjad Horani
  5. Fan Tu
  6. Edward M Marcotte
  7. Steven L Brody
  8. John B Wallingford  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Texas at Austin, United States
  2. Washington University School of Medicine, United States

Abstract

Motile ciliopathies are characterized by specific defects in cilia beating that result in chronic airway disease, subfertility, ectopic pregnancy, and hydrocephalus. While many patients harbor mutations in the dynein motors that drive cilia beating, the disease also results from mutations in so-called Dynein Axonemal Assembly Factors (DNAAFs) that act in the cytoplasm. The mechanisms of DNAAF action remain poorly defined. Here, we show that DNAAFs concentrate together with axonemal dyneins and chaperones into organelles that form specifically in multiciliated cells, which we term DynAPs, for Dynein Axonemal Particles. These organelles display hallmarks of biomolecular condensates, and remarkably, DynAPs are enriched for the stress granule protein G3bp1, but not for other stress granule proteins or P-body proteins. Finally, we show that both the formation and the liquid-like behaviors of DynAPs are disrupted in a model of motile ciliopathy. These findings provide a unifying cell biological framework for a poorly understood class of human disease genes and add motile ciliopathy to the growing roster of human diseases associated with disrupted biological phase separation.

Data availability

Software has been deposited to GitHub (https://github.com/marcottelab/FociFinder3D) and image data will be uploaded to Dryad.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Ryan L Huizar

    Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Chanjae Lee

    Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Alexander A Boulgakov

    Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7446-1120
  4. Amjad Horani

    Department of Pediatrics, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Fan Tu

    Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Edward M Marcotte

    Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8808-180X
  7. Steven L Brody

    Department of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. John B Wallingford

    Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
    For correspondence
    wallingford@austin.utexas.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6280-8625

Funding

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

  • Ryan L Huizar
  • Chanjae Lee
  • John B Wallingford

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Anthony A Hyman, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Germany

Ethics

Animal experimentation: Work here was approved by the UT Austin IACUC under protocol numbers: AUP-2015-00160 and AUP-2016-00184.

Version history

  1. Received: May 19, 2018
  2. Accepted: November 29, 2018
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: December 18, 2018 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: January 28, 2019 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2018, Huizar 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.

Metrics

  • 3,993
    Page views
  • 755
    Downloads
  • 41
    Citations

Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, Scopus, PubMed Central.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Ryan L Huizar
  2. Chanjae Lee
  3. Alexander A Boulgakov
  4. Amjad Horani
  5. Fan Tu
  6. Edward M Marcotte
  7. Steven L Brody
  8. John B Wallingford
(2018)
A liquid-like organelle at the root of motile ciliopathy
eLife 7:e38497.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.38497

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.38497

Further reading

    1. Cell Biology
    Kazuki Hanaoka, Kensuke Nishikawa ... Kouichi Funato
    Research Article

    Membrane contact sites (MCSs) are junctures that perform important roles including coordinating lipid metabolism. Previous studies have indicated that vacuolar fission/fusion processes are coupled with modifications in the membrane lipid composition. However, it has been still unclear whether MCS-mediated lipid metabolism controls the vacuolar morphology. Here, we report that deletion of tricalbins (Tcb1, Tcb2, and Tcb3), tethering proteins at endoplasmic reticulum (ER)–plasma membrane (PM) and ER–Golgi contact sites, alters fusion/fission dynamics and causes vacuolar fragmentation in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In addition, we show that the sphingolipid precursor phytosphingosine (PHS) accumulates in tricalbin-deleted cells, triggering the vacuolar division. Detachment of the nucleus–vacuole junction (NVJ), an important contact site between the vacuole and the perinuclear ER, restored vacuolar morphology in both cells subjected to high exogenous PHS and Tcb3-deleted cells, supporting that PHS transport across the NVJ induces vacuole division. Thus, our results suggest that vacuolar morphology is maintained by MCSs through the metabolism of sphingolipids.

    1. Cell Biology
    2. Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Monica Salinas-Pena, Elena Rebollo, Albert Jordan
    Research Article

    Histone H1 participates in chromatin condensation and regulates nuclear processes. Human somatic cells may contain up to seven histone H1 variants, although their functional heterogeneity is not fully understood. Here, we have profiled the differential nuclear distribution of the somatic H1 repertoire in human cells through imaging techniques including super-resolution microscopy. H1 variants exhibit characteristic distribution patterns in both interphase and mitosis. H1.2, H1.3, and H1.5 are universally enriched at the nuclear periphery in all cell lines analyzed and co-localize with compacted DNA. H1.0 shows a less pronounced peripheral localization, with apparent variability among different cell lines. On the other hand, H1.4 and H1X are distributed throughout the nucleus, being H1X universally enriched in high-GC regions and abundant in the nucleoli. Interestingly, H1.4 and H1.0 show a more peripheral distribution in cell lines lacking H1.3 and H1.5. The differential distribution patterns of H1 suggest specific functionalities in organizing lamina-associated domains or nucleolar activity, which is further supported by a distinct response of H1X or phosphorylated H1.4 to the inhibition of ribosomal DNA transcription. Moreover, H1 variants depletion affects chromatin structure in a variant-specific manner. Concretely, H1.2 knock-down, either alone or combined, triggers a global chromatin decompaction. Overall, imaging has allowed us to distinguish H1 variants distribution beyond the segregation in two groups denoted by previous ChIP-Seq determinations. Our results support H1 variants heterogeneity and suggest that variant-specific functionality can be shared between different cell types.