N-terminal domain on dystroglycan enables LARGE1 to extend matriglycan on α-dystroglycan and prevents muscular dystrophy
Abstract
Dystroglycan (DG) requires extensive post-translational processing and O-glycosylation to function as a receptor for extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins containing laminin-G-like (LG) domains. Matriglycan is an elongated polysaccharide of alternating xylose (Xyl) and glucuronic acid (GlcA) that binds with high-affinity to ECM proteins with LG-domains and is uniquely synthesized on α-dystroglycan (α-DG) by like-acetylglucosaminyltransferase-1 (LARGE1). Defects in the post-translational processing or O-glycosylation of α-DG that result in a shorter form of matriglycan reduce the size of α-DG and decrease laminin binding, leading to various forms of muscular dystrophy. Previously, we demonstrated that Protein O-Mannose Kinase (POMK) is required for LARGE1 to generate full-length matriglycan on α-DG (~150-250 kDa) (Walimbe et al., 2020). Here, we show that LARGE1 can only synthesize a short, non-elongated form of matriglycan in mouse skeletal muscle that lacks the DG N-terminus (α-DGN), resulting in a ~100-125 kDa α-DG. This smaller form of α-DG binds laminin and maintains specific force but does not prevent muscle pathophysiology, including reduced force production after eccentric contractions or abnormalities in the neuromuscular junctions. Collectively, our study demonstrates that α-DGN, like POMK, is required for LARGE1 to extend matriglycan to its full mature length on α-DG and thus prevent muscle pathophysiology.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting file; Source Data files have been provided for Figures 2C, 5C, 6B, 7B, Figure 2-figure supplement 1, Figure 2-figure supplement 2, Figure 5-figure supplement 1B, and Figure 6-figure supplement 1.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Specialized Research Center (1U54NS053672)
- Kevin P Campbell
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Kevin P Campbell
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: 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 animal experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) protocols of the University of Iowa (#0081122).
Copyright
© 2023, Okuma 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
-
- 1,566
- views
-
- 240
- downloads
-
- 7
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
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)
Further reading
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
The conformational ensemble and function of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are sensitive to their solution environment. The inherent malleability of disordered proteins, combined with the exposure of their residues, accounts for this sensitivity. One context in which IDPs play important roles that are concomitant with massive changes to the intracellular environment is during desiccation (extreme drying). The ability of organisms to survive desiccation has long been linked to the accumulation of high levels of cosolutes such as trehalose or sucrose as well as the enrichment of IDPs, such as late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins or cytoplasmic abundant heat-soluble (CAHS) proteins. Despite knowing that IDPs play important roles and are co-enriched alongside endogenous, species-specific cosolutes during desiccation, little is known mechanistically about how IDP-cosolute interactions influence desiccation tolerance. Here, we test the notion that the protective function of desiccation-related IDPs is enhanced through conformational changes induced by endogenous cosolutes. We find that desiccation-related IDPs derived from four different organisms spanning two LEA protein families and the CAHS protein family synergize best with endogenous cosolutes during drying to promote desiccation protection. Yet the structural parameters of protective IDPs do not correlate with synergy for either CAHS or LEA proteins. We further demonstrate that for CAHS, but not LEA proteins, synergy is related to self-assembly and the formation of a gel. Our results suggest that functional synergy between IDPs and endogenous cosolutes is a convergent desiccation protection strategy seen among different IDP families and organisms, yet the mechanisms underlying this synergy differ between IDP families.
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have great potential to be used as alternatives to embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in regenerative medicine and disease modelling. In this study, we characterise the proteomes of multiple hiPSC and hESC lines derived from independent donors and find that while they express a near-identical set of proteins, they show consistent quantitative differences in the abundance of a subset of proteins. hiPSCs have increased total protein content, while maintaining a comparable cell cycle profile to hESCs, with increased abundance of cytoplasmic and mitochondrial proteins required to sustain high growth rates, including nutrient transporters and metabolic proteins. Prominent changes detected in proteins involved in mitochondrial metabolism correlated with enhanced mitochondrial potential, shown using high-resolution respirometry. hiPSCs also produced higher levels of secreted proteins, including growth factors and proteins involved in the inhibition of the immune system. The data indicate that reprogramming of fibroblasts to hiPSCs produces important differences in cytoplasmic and mitochondrial proteins compared to hESCs, with consequences affecting growth and metabolism. This study improves our understanding of the molecular differences between hiPSCs and hESCs, with implications for potential risks and benefits for their use in future disease modelling and therapeutic applications.