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| Author(s): |
Tatiana de Arruda Campos Brasil de Souza
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Biologia |
| Defense date: | 2010-05-03 |
| Examining board members: |
João Alexandre Ribeiro Gonçalves Barbosa;
Debora Foguel;
Paulo Sergio Rodrigues Coelho;
Nilson Ivo Tonin Zanchin;
Jörg Kobarg
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| Advisor: | João Alexandre Ribeiro Gonçalves Barbosa |
| Abstract | |
A cell passes through some steps to enable for cell division and all these processes are called Cell Cycle. The spatial and temporal regulation of this process is crucial to maintaining cellular and genetic material. Failure in this process can lead to cell death or genetic changes causing division and unregulated growth of tumors. Among several proteins involved in cell cycle, there are the septins. To date, 14 different human genes coding for septins were found. Septins are GTP binding proteins first characterized in yeast, which are associated with important biological events in eukaryotes. In this study we selected three human septins to study functionally and structurally: septin 6, septin 8 and septin 10. Our results led to three articles that describe: i) strategies for cloning, expression, purification and preliminary characterization of human septin 8; ii) the ability of septin 2, 6, 8 and 11 to bind and hydrolyze GTP, but with different levels GTPase activity, human septin 2 is capable of hydrolyzing GTP faster than the other septins and III) the interaction between the human septin 10 and promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger protein (PLZF), whose expression in hematopoietic cell lines results in growth suppression and cell cycle arrest. The interaction between septin 10 and PLZF was confirmed by in vitro pull down assay and the cellular localization of septin 10 shows that this septin is expressed in the cell cytoplasm. Furthermore, our studies preliminary results show the relation of GTP binding and filament formation of the septin 6 and several strategies for the crystallization of septins as micro-seeding, streak-seeding, variations in pH, precipitants and additives, methylation of lysine and screening of buffers, but the results were not satisfactory for the resolution of a human septin structure (AU) | |