Capping protein nucleates the assembly of actin filaments and stabilizes actin filaments by binding to their barbed ends. We describe here a novel isoform of the beta subunit of chicken capping protein, the beta 2 isoform, which arises by alternative splicing. The chicken beta 1 isoform and the beta 2 isoform are identical in their amino acid sequence except for a short region at the COOH termi...

p27(Kip1) is an inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinases. It has been implicated as having a role in the induction of growth arrest at the G(1) phase of the cell cycle in response to anti-mitogenic signals such as cell contact and serum starvation. Proteasome-mediated degradation plays an important role in the rapid inactivation of p27(Kip1), causing quiescent cells to re-enter the cell cycle. Alt...

Malate synthases found in cells of the halophilic Archaea constitute a third isoform of this important metabolic enzyme, in addition to the well characterized A and G isoforms. They share little sequence similarity with these other two isoforms. Database searches using basic local alignments reveal relationships between isoforms A and G, but do not indicate a significant sequence relationship b...

The liverwort Marchantia polymorpha contains two isoforms of the plastid terminal oxidase (PTOX), an enzyme that catalyzes reduction oxygen to water using plastoquinol as substrate. Phylogenetic analyses showed one isoform, here called MpPTOXa, is closely related occurring in plants and some algae, while other MpPTOXb, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Mutants each isoform were created CRISPR/Cas9 tec...

Previous studies from this laboratory have demonstrated that down-regulation of the standard CD44 isoform at the mRNA and protein level is associated with the acquisition of high metastatic ability within the Dunning R-3327 system of rat prostate cancers. Additional studies demonstrated that transfection-induced enhanced expression of the standard CD44 isoform suppresses the metastatic ability ...

Abnormal myelination underlies the pathology of white matter diseases such as preterm injury and multiple sclerosis. Osteopontin (OPN) has been suggested to play a role in myelination. Murine OPN mRNA is translated into secreted isoform (sOPN) or an intracellular (iOPN). Whether there isoform-specific involvement unknown. Here we generated mouse models that either lacked both isoforms all cells...

The AKT kinase family is a high-profile target for cancer therapy. Despite their high degree of homology the three isoforms (AKT1, AKT2 and AKT3) are non-redundant can even have opposing functions. Small-molecule inhibitors affect all which severely limits usefulness as research tool or therapeutic. Using AKT2-specific nanobodies we examined function endogenous in breast cells. Two (Nb8 Nb9) mo...

Recent studies have shown that the RNA binding protein Musashi 2 (Msi2) plays important roles during development. Msi2 has also been shown to be elevated in several leukemias and its elevated expression has been linked with poorer prognosis in these cancers. Additionally, in embryonic stem cells (ESC) undergoing the early stages of differentiation, Msi2 has been shown to associate with the tran...

In the last century there has been great progress in the treatment of breast cancer by improving drug and radiation therapy as well as surgical techniques. Despite this development, breast cancer remains a major cause of death among women in Europe and the US. The cause of breast cancer at the cellular level is still not fully understood. In the present study, we investigated the expression of ...