This study examined the hypothesis that cardiomyocyte metabolism is inherently linked to the Ubiquitin Proteasome System. Rat neonatal ventricular cardiomyocytes were pulse-treated with 5 αM lactacystin for 30 min, resulting in 95% loss of proteasome activity, and then maintained in culture for up to 24 h. Pulse-treatment resulted in 36% decrease in cardiomyocyte mitochondrial reductase activit...

Accumulating evidence has implicated the proteasome in the processing of proteins along the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I presentation pathway. The availability of potent proteasome inhibitors provides an opportunity to examine the role ofproteasome function in antigen presentation by MHC class I molecules to CD8 + cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). We have investigated the proces...

The 20S proteasome has been shown to be largely responsible for the degradation of oxidatively modified proteins in the cytoplasm. Nuclear proteins are also subject to oxidation, and the nucleus of mammalian cells contains proteasome. In human beings, tumor cells frequently are subjected to oxidation as a consequence of antitumor chemotherapy, and K562 human myelogenous leukemia cells have a hi...

AIMS Proteasome inhibitors are a novel class of anticancer agents that induce tumour cell death via endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Since ER stress is involved in the development of heart failure, we investigated the role of ER-initiated cardiomyocyte death by proteasome inhibition. METHODS AND RESULTS Rat neonatal cardiomyocytes were used in this study. Proteasome activity was assayed usi...

Proteasomes are multi-subunit protein complexes, which present numerous targets for therapeutic interference. The most commonly used proteasome is 26S proteasome, which contains one 20S proteolytic core subunit and two 19S regulatory cap subunits. There are three different types of active sites of 20S proteolytic core and both, natural and synthetic proteasome inhibitors have been developed for...

The 20S proteasome is an essential, 28-subunit protease that sequesters proteolytic sites within a central chamber, thereby repressing substrate degradation until proteasome activators open the entrance/exit gate. Two established activators, Blm10 and PAN/19S, induce gate opening by binding to the pockets between proteasome α-subunits using C-terminal HbYX (hydrophobic-tyrosine-any residue) mot...

This paper describes the purification and properties of a multicatalytic proteinase complex, proteasome, from bovine skeletal muscle, in comparision with proteasome prepared from other species or organs. The purified bovine skeletal muscle proteasome exhibited a single band on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis under nondenaturing conditions. Bovine skeletal muscle proteasome degraded synthetic...

Proteasome inhibitors are novel antitumor agents against multiple myeloma and other malignancies. Despite the increasing clinical application, the molecular basis of their antitumor effect has been poorly understood due to the involvement of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway in multiple cellular metabolisms. Here, we show that treatment of cells with proteasome inhibitors has no significant effe...

Inhibitors of the proteasome interfere with transcriptional regulation of growth signaling pathways and block cell cycle progression of mitotic cells. As growth signaling pathways are highly conserved between mitotic and postmitotic cells, we hypothesized that proteasome inhibition might also be a valuable approach to interfere with hypertrophic growth of postmitotic cardiomyocytes. To test thi...