An Internal Signal Sequence Directs Intramembrane Proteolysis of a Cellular Immunoglobulin Domain Protein

An internal signal sequence directs intramembrane proteolysis of a cellular immunoglobulin domain protein.

Precursor proteolysis is a crucial mechanism for regulating protein structure and function. Signal peptidase (SP) is an enzyme with a well defined role in cleaving N-terminal signal sequences but no demonstrated function in the proteolysis of cellular precursor proteins. We provide evidence that SP mediates intraprotein cleavage of IgSF1, a large cellular Ig domain protein that is processed int...

Intramembrane Proteolysis of Signal

A former amino terminal signal sequence engineered to an internal location directs translocation of both flanking protein domains

To determine whether a functional amino terminal signal sequence can be active at an internal position, a hybrid gene was constructed in which the entire coding region of bovine preprolactin cDNA was inserted into chimpanzee alpha-globin cDNA 109 codons downstream from the initiation codon of globin. When RNA synthesized in vitro from this plasmid (pSPGP1) was translated in the rabbit reticuloc...

Intramembrane proteolysis and post-targeting functions of signal peptides.

Signal sequences are the addresses of proteins destined for secretion. In eukaryotic cells, they mediate targeting to the endoplasmic reticulum membrane and insertion into the translocon. Thereafter, signal sequences are cleaved from the pre-protein and liberated into the endoplasmic reticulum membrane. We have recently reported that some liberated signal peptides are further processed by the i...

SnapShot: Cartography of Intramembrane Proteolysis

Intramembrane proteases hydrolyze peptide bonds within the cell membrane as the decision-making step of various signaling pathways or during general proteostasis. Although initially thought to be rare, fourteen proteases from four superfamilies are now known to be distributed among nearly every membrane compartment of a human cell. Each protease is endowed with specific enzymatic properties tha...