Journal: The Journal of Biological Chemistry
Article Title: Protein kinase Cα–mediated phosphorylation of Twist1 at Ser-144 prevents Twist1 ubiquitination and stabilizes it
doi: 10.1074/jbc.RA118.005921
Figure Lengend Snippet: Constitutively active PKCα (PKCαCAT) increases Twist1 protein expression independent of RNA. Human EOC cell clone R182 were transfected with PKCαCAT or empty vector control. A and B, expression of endogenous Twist1 and overexpressed PKCαCAT proteins were determined by Western blotting (A) and quantified by densitometry (B) reported as fold changes compared with empty vector control. *, p = 0.0008. C, effect on mRNA level was analyzed by qPCR, normalized to GAPDH, and reported as fold changes compared with empty vector control 24 h after transfection. ns, not significant (p > 0.05). D, different amounts of plasmid carrying WT Twist1 were transfected in HEK293T cells in the presence or absence of different amounts of plasmid carrying PKCαCAT, and the effect on Twist1 protein determined by Western blotting. Empty vector was used to control for total amount of plasmids transfected. E, HEK293T cells (panels i and ii) and EOC cells clone R182 (panels iii and iv) were transfected with WT Twist1 in the presence of different activation status of PKCα or empty vector control as indicated, and the effect on Twist1 protein was determined by Western blotting analysis, and the resulting bands were quantified by densitometry. CAT, constitutively active; DN, dominant negative; WT, full-length inactive WT. Densitometry readings are reported as fold changes compared with empty vector control. **, p = 0.0017; ****, p = 0.0001. Note that the truncated PKCαCAT (48 kDa) can be distinguished from the full-length DN and WT proteins (80 kDa). F, PKCα was knocked out in OCSC1-F2 ovarian cancer cells using CRISPR/Cas9, and the levels of PKCα and endogenous Twist1 were determined by Western blotting analysis. GAPDH was used as loading control for all Western blots. Each experiment was performed at least three independent times. Representative data are shown.
Article Snippet: Briefly, the kinase reaction consisted of 5 ng of recombinant human active full-length PKCα protein (Millipore, catalog no. 14-484), 200 or 300 ng recombinant human Twist1 protein (Abcam, catalog no. ab132349), PKC lipid activator (0.1 mg/ml phosphatidylserine, 0.01 mg/ml diacylglycerol, 4 m m MOPS, pH 7.2, 5 m m β-glycerol phosphate, 0.2 m m sodium orthovanadate, 0.2 m m DTT, 0.2 m m CaCl 2 ), 20 m m HEPES, pH 7.4, 20 m m MgCl 2 , 0.1 mg/ml BSA, 0.1 m m CaCl 2 , and 100 μ m ATP.
Techniques: Expressing, Transfection, Plasmid Preparation, Control, Western Blot, Activation Assay, Dominant Negative Mutation, CRISPR