scholarly journals Structural insights into the cause of human RSPH4A primary ciliary dyskinesia

2021 ◽  
pp. mbc.E20-12-0806
Author(s):  
Yanhe Zhao ◽  
Justine Pinskey ◽  
Jianfeng Lin ◽  
Weining Yin ◽  
Patrick R. Sears ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia ◽  
Electron Tomography ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Structural Basis ◽  
Radial Spoke ◽  
Radial Spokes ◽  
Cilia And Flagella ◽  
Tract Infections ◽  
Ciliary Dyskinesia

Cilia and flagella are evolutionarily conserved eukaryotic organelles involved in cell motility and signaling. In humans, mutations in Radial Spoke Head Protein 4 homolog A ( RSPH4A) can lead to primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a life-shortening disease characterized by chronic respiratory tract infections, abnormal organ positioning, and infertility. Despite its importance for human health, the location of RSPH4A in human cilia has not been resolved, and the structural basis of RSPH4A-/- PCD remains elusive. Here, we present the native, three-dimensional structure of RSPH4A-/- human respiratory cilia using samples collected non-invasively from a PCD patient. Using cryo-electron tomography and subtomogram averaging, we compared the structures of control and RSPH4A-/- cilia, revealing primary defects in two of the three radial spokes (RSs) within the axonemal repeat and secondary (heterogeneous) defects in the central pair complex. Similar to RSPH1-/- cilia, the radial spoke heads of RS1 and RS2, but not RS3, were missing in RSPH4A-/- cilia. However, RSPH4A-/- cilia also exhibited defects within the arch domains adjacent to the RS1 and RS2 heads, which were not observed with RSPH1 loss. Our results provide insight into the underlying structural basis for RSPH4A-/- PCD and highlight the benefits of applying cryo-ET directly to patient samples for molecular structure determination. [Media: see text]

scholarly journals Three-dimensional structure of the radial spokes reveals heterogeneity and interactions with dyneins in Chlamydomonas flagella

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia F. Barber ◽  
Thomas Heuser ◽  
Blanca I. Carbajal-González ◽  
Vladimir V. Botchkarev ◽  
Daniela Nicastro
Keyword(s):  
Electron Tomography ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Flagellar Motility ◽  
Three Dimensional Structure ◽  
Radial Spoke ◽  
Cryo Electron Tomography ◽  
Radial Spokes ◽  
Axonemal Dynein ◽  
Subtomogram Averaging

Radial spokes (RSs) play an essential role in the regulation of axonemal dynein activity and thus of ciliary and flagellar motility. However, few details are known about the complexes involved. Using cryo–electron tomography and subtomogram averaging, we visualized the three-dimensional structure of the radial spokes in Chlamydomonas flagella in unprecedented detail. Unlike many other species, Chlamydomonas has only two spokes per axonemal repeat, RS1 and RS2. Our data revealed previously uncharacterized features, including two-pronged spoke bases that facilitate docking to the doublet microtubules, and that inner dyneins connect directly to the spokes. Structures of wild type and the headless spoke mutant pf17 were compared to define the morphology and boundaries of the head, including a direct RS1-to-RS2 interaction. Although the overall structures of the spokes are very similar, we also observed some differences, corroborating recent findings about heterogeneity in the docking of RS1 and RS2. In place of a third radial spoke we found an uncharacterized, shorter electron density named “radial spoke 3 stand-in,” which structurally bears no resemblance to RS1 and RS2 and is unaltered in the pf17 mutant. These findings demonstrate that radial spokes are heterogeneous in structure and may play functionally distinct roles in axoneme regulation.

scholarly journals Primary ciliary dyskinesia with normal ultrastructure: three-dimensional tomography detects absence of DNAH11

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 1701809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Shoemark ◽  
Thomas Burgoyne ◽  
Robert Kwan ◽  
Mellisa Dixon ◽  
Mitali P. Patel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia ◽  
Electron Tomography ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Structural Abnormality ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Ultrastructural Studies ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Causal Variants ◽  
Diagnostic Samples ◽  
Ciliary Dyskinesia

In primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), motile ciliary dysfunction arises from ciliary defects usually confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In 30% of patients, such as those with DNAH11 mutations, apparently normal ultrastructure makes diagnosis difficult. Genetic analysis supports diagnosis, but may not identify definitive causal variants. Electron tomography, an extension of TEM, produces three-dimensional ultrastructural ciliary models with superior resolution to TEM. Our hypothesis is that tomography using existing patient samples will enable visualisation of DNAH11-associated ultrastructural defects. Dual axis tomograms from araldite-embedded nasal cilia were collected in 13 PCD patients with normal ultrastructure (DNAH11 n=7, HYDIN n=2, CCDC65 n=3 and DRC1 n=1) and six healthy controls, then analysed using IMOD and Chimera software.DNAH11 protein is localised to the proximal ciliary region. Within this region, electron tomography indicated a deficiency of >25% of proximal outer dynein arm volume in all patients with DNAH11 mutations (n=7) compared to other patients with PCD and normal ultrastructure (n=6) and healthy controls (n=6). DNAH11 mutations cause a shared abnormality in ciliary ultrastructure previously undetectable by TEM. Advantageously, electron tomography can be used on existing diagnostic samples and establishes a structural abnormality where ultrastructural studies were previously normal.

scholarly journals Primary ciliary dyskinesia in a Staffordshire bull terrier : clinical communication

2004 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. De Scally ◽  
R.G. Lobetti ◽  
E. Van Wilpe
Keyword(s):  
Cross Sections ◽  
Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia ◽  
Clinical Communication ◽  
First Case ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Radial Spokes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Tract Infections ◽  
Ciliary Dyskinesia ◽  
Recurrent Respiratory Tract Infections

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a diverse group of inherited structural and functional abnormalities of the respiratory and other cilia, which results in recurrent respiratory tract infections. Primary ciliary dyskinesia was diagnosed in a 14-week old Staffordshire bull terrier that had a history of respiratory disease from 7 weeks of age. Pneumonia was diagnosed on thoracic radiographs and transtracheal aspirate. Transmission electron microscopy of the bronchi and trachea indicated the presence of both primary and secondary ciliary dyskinesia. The most prominent primary defects consisted of absent inner dyneim arms, absent radial spokes and absence of the central microtubules. These defects accounted for 62 % of the total number of cross-sections screened. Non-specific ciliary abnormalities encountered most often were compound cilia, swollen cilia, addition / deletion of peripheral doublets and disorganised axonemes (26 %). To the authors' knowledge, this is the first case of PCD described in the Staffordshire bull terrier and the first report of PCD in South Africa.

scholarly journals CFAP61 is required for sperm flagellum formation and male fertility in human and mouse

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyu Liu ◽  
Jintao Zhang ◽  
Zine Eddine Kherraf ◽  
Shuya Sun ◽  
Xin Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Male Fertility ◽  
Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia ◽  
Exon Skipping ◽  
Intraflagellar Transport ◽  
Transport Proteins ◽  
Radial Spoke ◽  
Sperm Flagellum ◽  
Cilia And Flagella ◽  
Ciliary Dyskinesia ◽  
Human And Mouse

Defects in the structure or motility of cilia and flagella may lead to severe diseases such as primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a multisystemic disorder with heterogeneous manifestations affecting primarily respiratory and reproductive functions. We report that CFAP61 is a conserved component of the Calmodulin and radial Spoke associated Complex (CSC) of cilia. We find that a CFAP61 splice variant, c.143+5G>A, causes exon skipping in human, inducing a multiple morphological abnormalities of the flagella (MMAF) phenotype. We generated Cfap61 knockout mice that recapitulate the infertility phenotype of the human CFAP61 mutation, but without other symptoms usually observed in PCD. We find that CFAP61 interacts with the CSC, radial spoke stalk and RS head. During early stages of Cfap61-/- spermatid development, the assembly of RS components is impaired. With the progress of spermiogenesis, the axoneme in Cfap61-/- cells becomes unstable and scatters, and the distribution of intraflagellar transport proteins is disrupted.

scholarly journals Ex vivo mammalian prions are formed of paired double helical prion protein fibrils

Open Biology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 160035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra Terry ◽  
Adam Wenborn ◽  
Nathalie Gros ◽  
Jessica Sells ◽  
Susan Joiner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prion Protein ◽  
Ex Vivo ◽  
Electron Tomography ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
High Titre ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Structural Basis ◽  
Physical Relationship ◽  
Prion Infectivity ◽  
Mammalian Prions

Mammalian prions are hypothesized to be fibrillar or amyloid forms of prion protein (PrP), but structures observed to date have not been definitively correlated with infectivity and the three-dimensional structure of infectious prions has remained obscure. Recently, we developed novel methods to obtain exceptionally pure preparations of prions from mouse brain and showed that pathogenic PrP in these high-titre preparations is assembled into rod-like assemblies. Here, we have used precise cell culture-based prion infectivity assays to define the physical relationship between the PrP rods and prion infectivity and have used electron tomography to define their architecture. We show that infectious PrP rods isolated from multiple prion strains have a common hierarchical assembly comprising twisted pairs of short fibres with repeating substructure. The architecture of the PrP rods provides a new structural basis for understanding prion infectivity and can explain the inability to systematically generate high-titre synthetic prions from recombinant PrP.

scholarly journals Tubulin glycylation controls axonemal dynein activity, flagellar beat, and male fertility

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 371 (6525) ◽  
pp. eabd4914
Author(s):  
Sudarshan Gadadhar ◽  
Gonzalo Alvarez Viar ◽  
Jan Niklas Hansen ◽  
An Gong ◽  
Aleksandr Kostarev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Posttranslational Modifications ◽  
Male Fertility ◽  
Electron Tomography ◽  
Structural Basis ◽  
Cellular Functions ◽  
Flagellar Beat ◽  
Cryo Electron Tomography ◽  
Axonemal Dynein ◽  
Dynein Arms ◽  
Cilia And Flagella

Posttranslational modifications of the microtubule cytoskeleton have emerged as key regulators of cellular functions, and their perturbations have been linked to a growing number of human pathologies. Tubulin glycylation modifies microtubules specifically in cilia and flagella, but its functional and mechanistic roles remain unclear. In this study, we generated a mouse model entirely lacking tubulin glycylation. Male mice were subfertile owing to aberrant beat patterns of their sperm flagella, which impeded the straight swimming of sperm cells. Using cryo–electron tomography, we showed that lack of glycylation caused abnormal conformations of the dynein arms within sperm axonemes, providing the structural basis for the observed dysfunction. Our findings reveal the importance of microtubule glycylation for controlled flagellar beating, directional sperm swimming, and male fertility.

scholarly journals Capturing Enveloped Viruses on Affinity Grids for Downstream Cryo-Electron Microscopy Applications

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella Kiss ◽  
Xuemin Chen ◽  
Melinda A. Brindley ◽  
Patricia Campbell ◽  
Claudio L. Afonso ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Measles Virus ◽  
Influenza A ◽  
Electron Tomography ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Nitrilotriacetic Acid ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Enveloped Viruses ◽  
Cryo Electron Microscopy ◽  
Human Immunodeficiency Virus Virus

AbstractElectron microscopy (EM), cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), and cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) are essential techniques used for characterizing basic virus morphology and determining the three-dimensional structure of viruses. Enveloped viruses, which contain an outer lipoprotein coat, constitute the largest group of pathogenic viruses to humans. The purification of enveloped viruses from cell culture presents certain challenges. Specifically, the inclusion of host-membrane-derived vesicles, the complete destruction of the viruses, and the disruption of the internal architecture of individual virus particles. Here, we present a strategy for capturing enveloped viruses on affinity grids (AG) for use in both conventional EM and cryo-EM/ET applications. We examined the utility of AG for the selective capture of human immunodeficiency virus virus-like particles, influenza A, and measles virus. We applied nickel-nitrilotriacetic acid lipid layers in combination with molecular adaptors to selectively adhere the viruses to the AG surface. This further development of the AG method may prove essential for the gentle and selective purification of enveloped viruses directly onto EM grids for ultrastructural analyses.

scholarly journals High-resolution three-dimensional probes of biomaterials and their interfaces

2012 ◽  
Vol 370 (1963) ◽  
pp. 1337-1351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Grandfield ◽  
Anders Palmquist ◽  
Håkan Engqvist
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Electron Tomography ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Controlled Drug Release ◽  
Biological Tissues ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Bone Interface ◽  
Biomaterial Interfaces ◽  
Titania Coating

Interfacial relationships between biomaterials and tissues strongly influence the success of implant materials and their long-term functionality. Owing to the inhomogeneity of biological tissues at an interface, in particular bone tissue, two-dimensional images often lack detail on the interfacial morphological complexity. Furthermore, the increasing use of nanotechnology in the design and production of biomaterials demands characterization techniques on a similar length scale. Electron tomography (ET) can meet these challenges by enabling high-resolution three-dimensional imaging of biomaterial interfaces. In this article, we review the fundamentals of ET and highlight its recent applications in probing the three-dimensional structure of bioceramics and their interfaces, with particular focus on the hydroxyapatite–bone interface, titanium dioxide–bone interface and a mesoporous titania coating for controlled drug release.

scholarly journals A guided approach for subtomogram averaging of challenging macromolecular assemblies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Grotjahn ◽  
Saikat Chowdhury ◽  
Gabriel C. Lander
Keyword(s):  
Electron Tomography ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Structural Heterogeneity ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Macromolecular Assemblies ◽  
Cryo Electron Tomography ◽  
Subtomogram Averaging

AbstractCryo-electron tomography is a powerful biophysical technique enabling three-dimensional visualization of complex biological systems. Macromolecular targets of interest identified within cryo-tomograms can be computationally extracted, aligned, and averaged to produce a better-resolved structure through a process called subtomogram averaging (STA). However, accurate alignment of macromolecular machines that exhibit extreme structural heterogeneity and conformational flexibility remains a significant challenge with conventional STA approaches. To expand the applicability of STA to a broader range of pleomorphic complexes, we developed a user-guided, focused refinement approach that can be incorporated into the standard STA workflow to facilitate the robust alignment of particularly challenging samples. We demonstrate that it is possible to align visually recognizable portions of multi-subunit complexes by providing a priori information regarding their relative orientations within cryo-tomograms, and describe how this strategy was applied to successfully elucidate the first three-dimensional structure of the dynein-dynactin motor protein complex bound to microtubules. Our approach expands the application of STA for solving a more diverse range of heterogeneous biological structures, and establishes a conceptual framework for the development of automated strategies to deconvolve the complexity of crowded cellular environments and improve in situ structure determination technologies.

scholarly journals Cryo-Electron Tomography Reveals the Comparative Three-Dimensional Architecture of Prochlorococcus, a Globally Important Marine Cyanobacterium

2007 ◽  
Vol 189 (12) ◽  
pp. 4485-4493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire S. Ting ◽  
Chyongere Hsieh ◽  
Sesh Sundararaman ◽  
Carmen Mannella ◽  
Michael Marko
Keyword(s):  
Cell Wall ◽  
Electron Tomography ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Membrane System ◽  
Niche Differentiation ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Comparative Genomic ◽  
Photosynthetic Membrane ◽  
Peptidoglycan Biosynthesis ◽  
Cryo Electron Tomography

ABSTRACT In an age of comparative microbial genomics, knowledge of the near-native architecture of microorganisms is essential for achieving an integrative understanding of physiology and function. We characterized and compared the three-dimensional architecture of the ecologically important cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus in a near-native state using cryo-electron tomography and found that closely related strains have diverged substantially in cellular organization and structure. By visualizing native, hydrated structures within cells, we discovered that the MED4 strain, which possesses one of the smallest genomes (1.66 Mbp) of any known photosynthetic organism, has evolved a comparatively streamlined cellular architecture. This strain possesses a smaller cell volume, an attenuated cell wall, and less extensive intracytoplasmic (photosynthetic) membrane system compared to the more deeply branched MIT9313 strain. Comparative genomic analyses indicate that differences have evolved in key structural genes, including those encoding enzymes involved in cell wall peptidoglycan biosynthesis. Although both strains possess carboxysomes that are polygonal and cluster in the central cytoplasm, the carboxysomes of MED4 are smaller. A streamlined cellular structure could be advantageous to microorganisms thriving in the low-nutrient conditions characteristic of large regions of the open ocean and thus have consequences for ecological niche differentiation. Through cryo-electron tomography we visualized, for the first time, the three-dimensional structure of the extensive network of photosynthetic lamellae within Prochlorococcus and the potential pathways for intracellular and intermembrane movement of molecules. Comparative information on the near-native structure of microorganisms is an important and necessary component of exploring microbial diversity and understanding its consequences for function and ecology.

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