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MYRF is a membrane-associated transcription factor that autoproteolytically cleaves to directly activate myelin genes.

PLoS biology | 2013

The myelination of axons is a crucial step during vertebrate central nervous system (CNS) development, allowing for rapid and energy efficient saltatory conduction of nerve impulses. Accordingly, the differentiation of oligodendrocytes, the myelinating cells of the CNS, and their expression of myelin genes are under tight transcriptional control. We previously identified a putative transcription factor, Myelin Regulatory Factor (Myrf), as being vital for CNS myelination. Myrf is required for the generation of CNS myelination during development and also for its maintenance in the adult. It has been controversial, however, whether Myrf directly regulates transcription, with reports of a transmembrane domain and lack of nuclear localization. Here we show that Myrf is a membrane-associated transcription factor that undergoes an activating proteolytic cleavage to separate its transmembrane domain-containing C-terminal region from a nuclear-targeted N-terminal region. Unexpectedly, this cleavage event occurs via a protein domain related to the autoproteolytic intramolecular chaperone domain of the bacteriophage tail spike proteins, the first time this domain has been found to play a role in eukaryotic proteins. Using ChIP-Seq we show that the N-terminal cleavage product directly binds the enhancer regions of oligodendrocyte-specific and myelin genes. This binding occurs via a defined DNA-binding consensus sequence and strongly promotes the expression of target genes. These findings identify Myrf as a novel example of a membrane-associated transcription factor and provide a direct molecular mechanism for its regulation of oligodendrocyte differentiation and CNS myelination.

Pubmed ID: 23966833 RIS Download

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Associated grants

  • Agency: NICHD NIH HHS, United States
    Id: P30 HD003352
  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 NS078092
  • Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 NS075243
  • Agency: NEI NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 EY010257
  • Agency: NEI NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 EY10257

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MEME Suite - Motif-based sequence analysis tools (tool)

RRID:SCR_001783

Suite of motif-based sequence analysis tools to discover motifs using MEME, DREME (DNA only) or GLAM2 on groups of related DNA or protein sequences; search sequence databases with motifs using MAST, FIMO, MCAST or GLAM2SCAN; compare a motif to all motifs in a database of motifs; associate motifs with Gene Ontology terms via their putative target genes, and analyze motif enrichment using SpaMo or CentriMo. Source code, binaries and a web server are freely available for noncommercial use.

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ChIP-seq (tool)

RRID:SCR_001237

Set of software modules for performing common ChIP-seq data analysis tasks across the whole genome, including positional correlation analysis, peak detection, and genome partitioning into signal-rich and signal-poor regions. The tools are designed to be simple, fast and highly modular. Each program carries out a well defined data processing procedure that can potentially fit into a pipeline framework. ChIP-Seq is also freely available on a Web interface.

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PROSITE (tool)

RRID:SCR_003457

Database of protein families and domains that is based on the observation that, while there is a huge number of different proteins, most of them can be grouped, on the basis of similarities in their sequences, into a limited number of families. Proteins or protein domains belonging to a particular family generally share functional attributes and are derived from a common ancestor. It is complemented by ProRule, a collection of rules based on profiles and patterns, which increases the discriminatory power of profiles and patterns by providing additional information about functionally and/or structurally critical amino acids. ScanProsite finds matches of your protein sequences to PROSITE signatures. PROSITE currently contains patterns and profiles specific for more than a thousand protein families or domains. Each of these signatures comes with documentation providing background information on the structure and function of these proteins. The database is available via FTP.

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HEK293T (tool)

RRID:CVCL_0063

Cell line HEK293T is a Transformed cell line with a species of origin Homo sapiens (Human)

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