Pacific Blue™
Excitation: 410nm, Emission: 455nm
Crystallographic and electron microscopy studies revealed genuflexed (bent) integrins in both unliganded (inactive) and physiologic ligandbound (active) states, suggesting that local conformational changes are sufficient for activation. Herein we have explored the role of local changes in the contact region between the membrane-proximal beta-tail domain (betaTD) and the ligand-binding betaA domain of the bent conformation in regulating interaction of integrin CD11b/CD18 (alphaMbeta2) with its physiologic ligand iC3b. We replaced the betaTD CD loop residues D658GMD of the CD18 (beta2) subunit with the equivalent D672SSG of the beta3 subunit, with AGAA or with NGTD, expressed the respective heterodimeric receptors either transiently in epithelial HEK293T cells or stably in leukocytes (K562), and measured their ability to bind iC3b and to conformation-sensitive mAbs. In the presence of the physiologic divalent cations Ca(2+) plus Mg(2+) (at 1 mM each), the modified integrins showed increased (in HEK293) or constitutive (in K562) binding to iC3b compared with wild-type receptors. K562 expressing the betaTD-modified integrins bound in Ca(2+)Mg(2+) to the betaA-directed high-affinity reporter mAb 24 but not to mAb KIM127, a reporter of the genu-straightened state. These data identify a role for the membrane proximal betaTD as an allosteric modulator of integrin activation.
Cytosine methylation within RNA is common, but its full scope and functions are poorly understood, as the RNA targets of most mammalian cytosine RNA methyltransferases (m(5)C-RMTs) remain uncharacterized. To enable their characterization, we developed a mechanism-based method for transcriptome-wide m(5)C-RMT target profiling. All characterized mammalian m(5)C-RMTs form a reversible covalent intermediate with their cytosine substrate-a covalent linkage that is trapped when conducted on the cytosine analog 5-azacytidine (5-aza-C). We used this property to develop Aza-immunoprecipitation (Aza-IP), a methodology to form stable m(5)C-RMT-RNA linkages in cell culture, followed by IP and high-throughput sequencing, to identify direct RNA substrates of m(5)C-RMTs. Remarkably, a cytosine-to-guanine (C?G) transversion occurs specifically at target cytosines, allowing the simultaneous identification of the precise target cytosine within each RNA. Thus, Aza-IP reports only direct RNA substrates and the C?G transversion provides an important criterion for target cytosine identification, which is not available in alternative approaches. Here we present a step-by-step protocol for Aza-IP and downstream analysis, designed to reveal identification of substrate RNAs and precise cytosine targets of m(5)C-RMTs. The entire protocol takes 40-50 d to complete.
