Curator: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
Chaperon Protein Mechanism inspired MIT Team to Model the Role of Genetic Mutations on Cancer Progression, proposing the next generation of Oncology drugs to aim at Suppression of Passenger Mutations. Current drug, in clinical trials, use the Chaperon Protein Mechanism to suppress Driver Mutations.
Kirill S. Korolev1, Christopher McFarland2, and Leonid A. Mirny3
1Department of Physics, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
E-mail: papers.korolev@gmail.com
2Graduate Program in Biophysics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
3Health Sciences and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, MA
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute Physical Sciences Oncology Center at MIT.
SOURCE:
http://cnls.lanl.gov/q-bio/wiki/images/4/40/Abstract.pdf
Deleterious passenger mutations significantly affect evolutionary dynamics of cancer. Including passenger mutations in evolutionary models is necessary to understand the role of genetic diversity in cancer progression and to create new treatments based on the accumulation of deleterious passenger mutations.
Evolutionary models of cancer almost exclusively focus on the acquisition of driver mutations, which are beneficial to cancer cells. The driver mutations, however, are only a small fraction of the mutations found in tumors. The other mutations, called passenger mutations, are typically neglected because their effect on fitness is assumed to be very small. Recently, it has been suggested that some passenger mutations are slightly deleterious. We find that deleterious passengers significantly affect cancer progression. In particular, they lead to a critical tumor size, below which tumors shrink on average, and to an optimal mutation rate for cancer evolution.
ANCER is an outcome of somatic evolution [1-3]. To outcompete their benign sisters, cancer cells need to acquire many heritable changes (driver mutations) that enable proliferation. In addition to the rare beneficial drivers, cancer cells must also acquire neutral or slightly deleterious passenger mutations [4]. Indeed, the number of possible passengers exceeds the number of possible drivers by orders of magnitude. Surprisingly, the effect of passenger mutations on cancer progression has not been explored. To address this problem, we developed an evolutionary model of cancer progression, which includes both drivers and passengers. This model was analyzed both numerically and analytically to understand how mutation rate, population size, and fitness effects of mutations affect cancer progression.
RESULTS
Upon including passengers in our model, we found that cancer is no longer a straightforward progression to malignancy. In particular, there is a critical population size such that smaller populations accumulate passengers and decline, while larger populations accumulate drivers and grow. The transition to cancer for small initial populations is, therefore, stochastic in nature and is similar to diffusion over an energy barrier in chemical kinetics. We also found that there is an optimal mutation rate for cancer development, and passengers with intermediate fitness costs are most detrimental to cancer. The existence of an optimal mutation rate could explain recent clinical data [5] and is in stark contrast to the predictions of the models neglecting passengers. We also show that our theory is consistent with recent sequencing data.
SOURCE:
http://cnls.lanl.gov/q-bio/wiki/images/4/40/Abstract.pdf
Just as some mutations in the genome of cancer cells actively spur tumor growth, it would appear there are also some that do the reverse, and act to slow it down or even stop it, according to a new US study led by MIT.
Senior author, Leonid Mirny, an associate professor of physics and health sciences and technology at MIT, and colleagues, write about this surprise finding in a paper to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In a statement released on Monday, Mirny tells the press:
“Cancer may not be a sequence of inevitable accumulation of driver events, but may be actually a delicate balance between drivers and passengers.”
“Spontaneous remissions or remissions triggered by drugs may actually be mediated by the load of deleterious passenger mutations,” he suggests.
Cancer Cell‘s Genome Has “Drivers” and “Passengers”
Your average cancer cell has a genome littered with thousands of mutations and hundreds of mutated genes. But only a handful of these mutated genes are drivers that are responsible for the uncontrolled growth that leads to tumors.
Up until this study, cancer researchers have mostly not paid much attention to the “passenger” mutations, believing that because they were not “drivers”, they had little effect on cancer progression.
Now Mirny and colleagues have discovered, to their surprise, that the “passengers” aren’t there just for the ride. In sufficient numbers, they can slow down, and even stop, the cancer cells from growing and replicating as tumors.
New Drugs Could Target the Passenger Mutations in Protein Chaperoning
Although there are already several drugs in development that target the effect of chaperone proteins in cancer, they are aiming to suppress driver mutations.
Recently, biochemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst , “trapped” a chaperone in action, providing a dynamic snapshot of its mechanism as a way to help development of new drugs that target drivers.
But Mirny and colleagues say there is now another option: developing drugs that target the same chaperoning process, but their aim would be to encourage the suppressive effect of the passenger mutations.
They are now comparing cells with identical driver mutations but different passenger mutations, to see which have the strongest effect on growth.
They are also inserting the cells into mice to see which are the most likely to lead to secondary tumors (metastasize).
Written by Catharine Paddock PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
SOURCE:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/255920.php
In current studies, the researchers are comparing cancer cell lines that have identical driver mutations but a different load of passenger mutations, to see which grow faster. They are also injecting the cancer cell lines into mice to see which are likeliest to metastasize.
Drugs that tip the balance in favor of the passenger mutations could offer a new way to treat cancer, the researchers say, beating it with its own weapon — mutations. Although the influence of a single passenger mutation is minuscule, “collectively they can have a profound effect,” Mirny says. “If a drug can make them a little bit more deleterious, it’s still a tiny effect for each passenger, but collectively this can build up.”
In natural populations, selection weeds out deleterious mutations. However, Mirny and his colleagues suspected that the evolutionary process in cancer can proceed differently, allowing mutations with only a slightly harmful effect to accumulate.
If enough deleterious passengers are present, their cumulative effects can slow tumor growth, the simulations found. Tumors may become dormant, or even regress, but growth can start up again if new driver mutations are acquired. This matches the cancer growth patterns often seen in human patients.
“Spontaneous remissions or remissions triggered by drugs may actually be mediated by the load of deleterious passenger mutations.”
When they analyzed passenger mutations found in genomic data taken from cancer patients, the researchers found the same pattern predicted by their model — accumulation of large quantities of slightly deleterious mutations.
REFERENCE
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2013, February 4). Some cancer mutations slow tumor growth. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 4, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130204154011.htm
Biochemists Trap A Chaperone Machine In Action
Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 11 Dec 2012 – 0:00 PST
Molecular chaperones have emerged as exciting new potential drug targets, because scientists want to learn how to stop cancer cells, for example, from using chaperones to enable their uncontrolled growth. Now a team of biochemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by Lila Gierasch have deciphered key steps in the mechanism of the Hsp70 molecular machine by “trapping” this chaperone in action, providing a dynamic snapshot of its mechanism.
She and colleagues describe this work in the current issue of Cell. Gierasch’s research on Hsp70 chaperones is supported by a long-running grant to her lab from NIH’s National Institute for General Medical Sciences.
Molecular chaperones like the Hsp70s facilitate the origami-like folding of proteins, made in the cell’s nanofactories or ribosomes, from where they emerge unstructured like noodles. Proteins only function when folded into their proper structures, but the process is so difficult under cellular conditions that molecular chaperone helpers are needed.
The newly discovered information about chaperone action is important because all rapidly dividing cells use a lot of Hsp70, Gierasch points out. “The saying is that cancer cells are addicted to Hsp70 because they rely on this chaperone for explosive new cell growth. Cancer shifts our body’s production of Hsp70 into high gear. If we can figure out a way to take that away from cancer cells, maybe we can stop the out-of-control tumor growth. To find a molecular way to inhibit Hsp70, you’ve got to know how it works and what it needs to function, so you can identify its vulnerabilities.”
Chaperone proteins in cells, from bacteria to humans, act like midwives or bodyguards, protecting newborn proteins from misfolding and existing proteins against loss of structure caused by stress such as heat or a fever. In fact, the heat shock protein (Hsp) group includes a variety of chaperones active in both these situations.
As Gierasch explains, “New proteins emerge into a challenging environment. It’s very crowded in the cell and it would be easy for them to get their sticky amino acid chains tangled and clumped together. Chaperones bind to them and help to avoid this aggregation, which is implicated in many pathologies such as neurodegenerative diseases. This role of chaperones has also heightened interest in using them therapeutically.”
However, chaperones must not bind too tightly or a protein can’t move on to do its job. To avoid this, chaperones rapidly cycle between tight and loose binding states, determined by whether ATP or ADP is bound. In the loose state, a protein client is free to fold or to be picked up by another chaperone that will help it fold to do its cellular work. In effect, Gierasch says, Hsp70s create a “holding pattern” to keep the protein substrate viable and ready for use, but also protected.
She and colleagues knew the Hsp70’s structure in both tight and loose binding affinity states, but not what happened between, which is essential to understanding the mechanism of chaperone action. Using the analogy of a high jump, they had a snapshot of the takeoff and landing, but not the top of the jump. “Knowing the end points doesn’t tell us how it works. There is a shape change in there that we wanted to see,” Gierasch says.
To address this, she and her colleagues postdoctoral fellows Anastasia Zhuravleva and Eugenia Clerico obtained “fingerprints” of the structure of Hsp70 in different states by using state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods that allowed them to map how chemical environments of individual amino acids of the protein change in different sample conditions. Working with an Hsp70 known as DnaK from E. coli bacteria, Zhuravleva and Clerico assigned its NMR spectra. In other words, they determined which peaks came from which amino acids in this large molecule.
The UMass Amherst team then mutated the Hsp70 so that cycling between tight and loose binding states stopped. As Gierasch explains, “Anastasia and Eugenia were able to stop the cycle part-way through the high jump, so to speak, and obtain the molecular fingerprint of a transient intermediate.” She calls this accomplishment “brilliant.”
Now that the researchers have a picture of this critical allosteric state, that is, one in which events at one site control events in another, Gierasch says many insights emerge. For example, it appears nature uses this energetically tense state to “tune” alternate versions of Hsp70 to perform different cellular functions. “Tuning means there may be evolutionary changes that let the chaperone work with its partners optimally,” she notes.
“And if you want to make a drug that controls the amount of Hsp70 available to a cell, our work points the way toward figuring out how to tickle the molecule so you can control its shape and its ability to bind to its client. We’re not done, but we made a big leap,” Gierasch adds. “We now have a idea of what the Hsp70 structure is when it is doing its job, which is extraordinarily important.”
Visit our biology / biochemistry section for the latest news on this subject.
REFERENCES
[1] Michor F, Iwasa Y, and Nowak MA (2004) Dynamics of cancer
progression. Nature Reviews Cancer 4, 197-205.
[2] Crespi B and Summers K (2005) Evolutionary biology of cancer.
Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20, 545-552.
[3] Merlo LMF, et al. (2006) Cancer as an evolutionary and ecological
process. Nature Reviews Cancer 6, 924-935.
[4] McFarland C, et al. “Accumulation of deleterious passenger mutations
in cancer,” in preparation.
[5] Birkbak NJ, et al. (2011) Paradoxical relationship between
chromosomal instability and survival outcome in cancer. Cancer
Other related articles on this Open Access Online Scientific Journal include the following:
Hold on. Mutations in Cancer do good.
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/02/04/hold-on-mutations-in-cancer-do-good/
Rational Design of Allosteric Inhibitors and Activators Using the Population-Shift Model: In Vitro Validation and Application to an Artificial Biosensor
LEADERS in Genome Sequencing of Genetic Mutations for Therapeutic Drug Selection in Cancer Personalized Treatment: Part 2
Exome sequencing of serous endometrial tumors shows recurrent somatic mutations in chromatin-remodeling and ubiquitin ligase complex genes
Genome-Wide Detection of Single-Nucleotide and Copy-Number Variation of a Single Human Cell(1)
Gastric Cancer: Whole-genome reconstruction and mutational signatures
Pregnancy with a Leptin-Receptor Mutation
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/10/31/pregnancy-with-a-leptin-receptor-mutation/
Mitochondrial mutation analysis might be “1-step” away
Genome-wide Single-Cell Analysis of Recombination Activity and De Novo Mutation Rates in Human Sperm
A Prion Like-Protein, Protein Kinase Mzeta and Memory Maintenance
Hope for Male Contraception: A small molecule that inhibits a protein important for chromatin organization can cause reversible sterility in male mice
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http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/07/25/protein-folding-may-lead-to-better-flu-vaccine/
SNAP: Predict Effect of Non-synonymous Polymorphisms: How well Genome Interpretation Tools could Translate to the Clinic
Drugging the Epigenome
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/02/01/drugging-the-epigenome/
PUT IT IN CONTEXT OF CANCER CELL MOVEMENT
The contraction of skeletal muscle is triggered by nerve impulses, which stimulate the release of Ca2+ from the sarcoplasmic reticuluma specialized network of internal membranes, similar to the endoplasmic reticulum, that stores high concentrations of Ca2+ ions. The release of Ca2+ from the sarcoplasmic reticulum increases the concentration of Ca2+ in the cytosol from approximately 10-7 to 10-5 M. The increased Ca2+ concentration signals muscle contraction via the action of two accessory proteins bound to the actin filaments: tropomyosin and troponin (Figure 11.25). Tropomyosin is a fibrous protein that binds lengthwise along the groove of actin filaments. In striated muscle, each tropomyosin molecule is bound to troponin, which is a complex of three polypeptides: troponin C (Ca2+-binding), troponin I (inhibitory), and troponin T (tropomyosin-binding). When the concentration of Ca2+ is low, the complex of the troponins with tropomyosin blocks the interaction of actin and myosin, so the muscle does not contract. At high concentrations, Ca2+ binding to troponin C shifts the position of the complex, relieving this inhibition and allowing contraction to proceed.
Figure 11.25
Association of tropomyosin and troponins with actin filaments. (A) Tropomyosin binds lengthwise along actin filaments and, in striated muscle, is associated with a complex of three troponins: troponin I (TnI), troponin C (TnC), and troponin T (TnT). In (more ) Contractile Assemblies of Actin and Myosin in Nonmuscle Cells
Contractile assemblies of actin and myosin, resembling small-scale versions of muscle fibers, are present also in nonmuscle cells. As in muscle, the actin filaments in these contractile assemblies are interdigitated with bipolar filaments of myosin II, consisting of 15 to 20 myosin II molecules, which produce contraction by sliding the actin filaments relative to one another (Figure 11.26). The actin filaments in contractile bundles in nonmuscle cells are also associated with tropomyosin, which facilitates their interaction with myosin II, probably by competing with filamin for binding sites on actin.
Figure 11.26
Contractile assemblies in nonmuscle cells. Bipolar filaments of myosin II produce contraction by sliding actin filaments in opposite directions. Two examples of contractile assemblies in nonmuscle cells, stress fibers and adhesion belts, were discussed earlier with respect to attachment of the actin cytoskeleton to regions of cell-substrate and cell-cell contacts (see Figures 11.13 and 11.14). The contraction of stress fibers produces tension across the cell, allowing the cell to pull on a substrate (e.g., the extracellular matrix) to which it is anchored. The contraction of adhesion belts alters the shape of epithelial cell sheets: a process that is particularly important during embryonic development, when sheets of epithelial cells fold into structures such as tubes.
The most dramatic example of actin-myosin contraction in nonmuscle cells, however, is provided by cytokinesisthe division of a cell into two following mitosis (Figure 11.27). Toward the end of mitosis in animal cells, a contractile ring consisting of actin filaments and myosin II assembles just underneath the plasma membrane. Its contraction pulls the plasma membrane progressively inward, constricting the center of the cell and pinching it in two. Interestingly, the thickness of the contractile ring remains constant as it contracts, implying that actin filaments disassemble as contraction proceeds. The ring then disperses completely following cell division.
Figure 11.27
Cytokinesis. Following completion of mitosis (nuclear division), a contractile ring consisting of actin filaments and myosin II divides the cell in two.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9961/
This is good. I don’t recall seeing it in the original comment. I am very aware of the actin myosin troponin connection in heart and in skeletal muscle, and I did know about the nonmuscle work. I won’t deal with it now, and I have been working with Aviral now online for 2 hours.
I have had a considerable background from way back in atomic orbital theory, physical chemistry, organic chemistry, and the equilibrium necessary for cations and anions. Despite the calcium role in contraction, I would not discount hypomagnesemia in having a disease role because of the intracellular-extracellular connection. The description you pasted reminds me also of a lecture given a few years ago by the Nobel Laureate that year on the mechanism of cell division.
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