Browsing by department "Department of Biosciences"

Huntington's disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes involuntary muscle movements, deteriorates muscle coordination and cognitive decline. Typical onset age of the disease is in mid age, although a juvenile form of HD is also known. The disease is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner via a mutation in the huntingtin gene (HTT). The characteristic mutation in HTT is an expansion of the glutamine stretch at the 5 end of the gene. Excessive amounts of glutamine residues alters the conformation and chemical features of the huntingtin protein (HTT) leading to accumulation of cellular aggregates. Although to date there are several known alterations in the cell that contribute to the disease, the pathogenesis of HD is not fully understood. Ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) dismantles proteolytically unneeded or damaged proteins, which are targeted to proteolysis when ubiquitin tags are added to them. Deubiquitinating enzymes (DUB) recycle ubiquitin molecules by releasing them from proteasome substrates. Recycling of ubiquitin is critical to a cell as it maintains the free pool of the targeting molecule. Ubiquitin-specific protease 14 (USP14) is one of the DUB family enzymes and its distinctive function is to remove ubiquitin molecules from the tip of the ubiquitin chain and thus antagonize protein degradation. Although the specific function of the protein is unclear, it seems that USP14 operates as a fine regulator of protein turnover rate and in ER stress both in catalytic and non catalytic manner. The role of USP14 is especially emphasized in the nervous system, as it regulates synaptic transmission and neuronal development. Although it is suggested that dysfunction of UPS is involved in the pathogenesis of HD, the role of USP14 in the disease remains to be unknown. IU1 is a novel inhibitor of the catalytic domain of USP14. Studies with IU1 indicate that inhibition of USP14 enhances the clearance of aggregate prone proteins. The approach of this thesis was aimed to elucidate the routes of HD pathogenesis from diverse approaches. The general aim of the thesis was to investigate the role of USP14 in the wild-type PC6.3 cell model, and in the pathogenesis of HD by expressing HTT proteins with different lengths of glutamine stretches in PC6.3 cells. The specific aim of the study was to examine by western blot and microscopy analysis the pathogenic routes of HD that involve ER stress, oxidative stress, autophagy and mutant HTT aggregate dynamics. The function of USP14 was studied with overexpression of USP14, or by inhibiting its catalytic activity by IU1. The findings of this thesis show that overexpression of USP14 enhances the clearance of mutant HTT aggregates, and this effect is obtained in catalytic activity dependent manner. I show that upregulated USP14 is connected to improved clearance of mutant HTT and inhibition of autophagy, suggesting that the degradation is mediated via UPS. The catalytic activity of USP14 might also be important in ER stress regulation, as the results indicate that IU1 activates phosphorylation of both JNK and eIF2α. I was also able to establish a connection between USP14 and GADD34, as I show that GADD34 upregulates USP14. Finally, I show that catalytic inhibition of USP14 decreases the expression of antioxidant SOD2. The data in this thesis is lacking statistical significance, and it can be considered solely as a guideline. However, together these results indicate that the deubiquitinating activity of USP14 increases survival in PC6.3 cells in both a healthy and a HD model.

Microvesicles (MVs) are lipid bilayered membranous vesicles containing functional lipids, proteins, RNA and DNA that are produced by most cells. The physiological significance of MVs has become evident, and increased MV counts and the contents of MVs are nowadays also associated with different pathophysiological phenomena. The goal of the field is to use MVs as diagnostic and therapeutic tools. To achieve this, the understanding of the mechanisms of the functions of MVs should be understood better and additionally, reliable methods for the quantification and characterization of MVs should be developed and standardized. The aim of the study was to determine differences in platelet-derived MVs produced by different activation mechanisms. The second aim was to set up and optimize a protocol based on the reaction of sulphur, phosphate and vanillin (SPV) for measuring lipid content of MVs. The third aim was to study the effect of thrombin and proteinase inhibitor PPACK to the vesiculation of platelets. Platelets were isolated from the whole blood of healthy volunteers and vesicles were produced by platelet agonists mediating thrombogenic activation (thrombin and collagen, TC), pathophysiological activation (lipopolysaccharide, LPS) and Ca-ionophore (A23187) as positive control for vesiculation. Quantification and size determination of produced MVs was done using Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA). MVs were characterized by protein content using bicinchonic acid assay (BCA) and by lipid content using SPV-reaction. MVs had great activation-dependent differences in the lipid and the protein content. Activation with Ca-ionophore produced the most MVs, but the lipid and protein content was only a fraction from (patho)physiologically induced MVs. Only TC increased vesiculation. Vesicle subpopulations had significant difference in lipid content. Thrombin and proteinase inhibitor PPACK mediated inhibition of platelet formation in all of the activations, but the effect was not statistically significant. The mechanism of inhibition was likely to be proteinase inhibitor mediated. The isolation of vesicle populations using differential centrifugation proved to isolate studied populations only partially and the quantification method with NTA was susceptible to concentrated samples. SPV protocol reacted with different intensity to different lipids. In the future, quantification and isolation methods for MVs and the subpopulations of MVs should be improved. Additionally, to understand the physiologically relevant mechanisms of platelet-derived vesicle formation, the inhibitor experiments with PPACK should be continued, because the number of replicates was too low to see significant effects due to a large donor-dependent deviation. Since MVs are heterogenous cellular multitools affecting varying (patho)physiological phenomena, optimization and standardization of methods should be continued in order to study MVs properly.