Super-resolution microscopy reveals a preformed NEMO lattice structure that is collapsed in incontinentia pigmenti

• Published in: Nature communications 2016-09, Vol.7 (1), p.12629-12629, Article 12629
• Main Authors: Scholefield, Janine, Henriques, Ricardo, Savulescu, Anca F., Fontan, Elisabeth, Boucharlat, Alix, Laplantine, Emmanuel, Smahi, Asma, Israël, Alain, Agou, Fabrice, Mhlanga, Musa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 13; 14; 14/63; 631/250/516/1909; 631/80/304; 82; 96; 96/21; Bioengineering; Biophysics; Cell Line, Tumor; Enzyme Activation; Gene expression; Genetics; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Hypotheses; I-kappa B Kinase - metabolism; I-kappa B Kinase - physiology; I-kappa B Kinase - ultrastructure; Imaging; Incontinentia Pigmenti - pathology; Kinases; Life Sciences; Microscopy; Microscopy - methods; multidisciplinary; Mutation; NF-kappa B - metabolism; Protein Binding; Protein Structure, Secondary; Proteins; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Signal transduction; Synthetic biology; Tumor necrosis factor-TNF; Ubiquitin - metabolism
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12629

© The Author(s) 2016.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The NF-κB pathway has critical roles in cancer, immunity and inflammatory responses. Understanding the mechanism(s) by which mutations in genes involved in the pathway cause disease has provided valuable insight into its regulation, yet many aspects remain unexplained. Several lines of evidence have led to the hypothesis that the regulatory/sensor protein NEMO acts as a biological binary switch. This hypothesis depends on the formation of a higher-order structure, which has yet to be identified using traditional molecular techniques. Here we use super-resolution microscopy to reveal the existence of higher-order NEMO lattice structures dependent on the presence of polyubiquitin chains before NF-κB activation. Such structures may permit proximity-based trans-autophosphorylation, leading to cooperative activation of the signalling cascade. We further show that NF-κB activation results in modification of these structures. Finally, we demonstrate that these structures are abrogated in cells derived from incontinentia pigmenti patients. This work was funded by the Department of Science and Technology of South Africa. A.F.S. is funded by a Young Researcher Establishment Fund, CSIR (YREF 2015 009) and J.S. by the National Research Foundation Professional Development Programme Fund (NRF PDP). M.M.M. and R.H. are funded by PTDC/SAU-GMG/115652/2009 from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal). R.H. is funded by grants from the UK Medical Research Council (MR/K015826/1) and UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/M022374/1). F.A. acknowledges funding from Institut Pasteur:Citech, Global care initiative and Institut Carnot Pasteur MI.