Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 2A (CMT2A) is caused by mutations in the gene MFN2 and is one of the most common inherited peripheral neuropathies. Mfn2 is one of two mammalian mitofusin GTPases that promote mitochondrial fusion and maintain organelle integrity. It is not known how mitofusin mutations cause axonal degeneration and CMT2A disease. We used the conserved yeast mitofusin FZO1 to st...

The mammalian homologues of yeast and Drosophila Fzo, mitofusin (Mfn) 1 and 2, are both essential for mitochondrial fusion and maintenance of mitochondrial morphology. Though the GTPase domain is required for Mfn protein function, the molecular mechanisms of the GTPase-dependent reaction as well as the functional division of the two Mfn proteins are unknown. To examine the function of Mfn prote...

We report the frequency, positive rate, and type of mutations in 14 genes (PMP22, GJB1, MPZ, MFN2, SH3TC2, GDAP1, NEFL, LITAF, GARS, HSPB1, FIG4, EGR2, PRX, and RAB7A) associated with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) in a cohort of 17,880 individuals referred to a commercial genetic testing laboratory. Deidentified results from sequencing assays and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplifica...

T he adult hearts relies on oxidative phosphorylation within the mitochondria as the primary source of energy production. A potential deleterious byproduct of oxidative phosphor-ylation is the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), 1 and thus cardiac mitochondria are currently appreciated as the major source of ROS within the heart. Subsequently, elevations in mitochondrial ROS production...

Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) viral protein R (Vpr) has been shown to induce host cell death by increasing the permeability of mitochondrial outer membrane (MOM). The mechanism underlying the damage to the mitochondria by Vpr, however, is not clearly illustrated. In this study, Vpr that is introduced, via transient transfection or lentivirus infection, into the human embryonic kidney c...

The action of β-adrenergic receptors (β-ARs) induces cardiac fibroblast (CF) proliferation and collagen synthesis and is a major source of the cardiac fibrosis caused by various diseases. Recently, microRNA-214 (miR-214) was found to play an important role in the pathogenesis of cardiac remodelling. In the present study, we examined the role and the underlying mechanism of miR-214 in isoprotere...

The balance between mitochondrial fission and fusion is crucial for mitochondria to perform its normal cellular functions. We hypothesized that cigarette smoke (CS) disrupts this balance and enhances mitochondrial dysfunction in the airway. In nonasthmatic human airway smooth muscle (ASM) cells, CS extract (CSE) induced mitochondrial fragmentation and damages their networked morphology in a con...

Mitochondria are physically and biochemically in contact with other organelles including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Such contacts are formed between mitochondria-associated ER membranes (MAM), specialized subregions of ER, and the outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM). We have previously shown increased expression of MAM-associated proteins and enhanced ER to mitochondria Ca(2+) transfer from...

Dominant optic atrophy (DOA)1,2 and axonal peripheral neuropathy (Charcot-Marie-Tooth Type 2 or CMT2)3 are hereditary neurodegenerative disorders most commonly caused by mutations in the canonical mitochondrial fusion genes OPA1 and MFN2, respectively4. In yeast, homologs of OPA1(Mgm1) and MFN2(Fzo1) work in concert with Ugo15,6, which has no human equivalent to date7. By whole exome sequencing...

Gastric cancer is the fifth most common cancer worldwide and Hippo-Yap is the novel signaling pathway which plays an important role in gastric cancer tumor development and progression. However, little insight is available to date regarding the specific role of Yes-associated protein (Yap) in gastric cancer. In the present study, we identified the mechanism through which Yap sustains gastric can...