scholarly journals TMEM16F phospholipid scramblase mediates trophoblast fusion and placental development

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (19) ◽  
pp. eaba0310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Zhang ◽  
Trieu Le ◽  
Ryan Grabau ◽  
Zahra Mohseni ◽  
Hoejeong Kim ◽  
...  

Cell-cell fusion or syncytialization is fundamental to the reproduction, development, and homeostasis of multicellular organisms. In addition to various cell type–specific fusogenic proteins, cell surface externalization of phosphatidylserine (PS), a universal eat-me signal in apoptotic cells, has been observed in different cell fusion events. Nevertheless, the molecular underpinnings of PS externalization and cellular mechanisms of PS-facilitated cell-cell fusion are unclear. Here, we report that TMEM16F, a Ca2+-activated phospholipid scramblase (CaPLSase), plays an essential role in placental trophoblast fusion by translocating PS to cell surface independent of apoptosis. The placentas from the TMEM16F knockout mice exhibit deficiency in trophoblast syncytialization and placental development, which lead to perinatal lethality. We thus identified a new biological function of TMEM16F CaPLSase in trophoblast fusion and placental development. Our findings provide insight into understanding cell-cell fusion mechanism of other cell types and on mitigating pregnancy complications such as miscarriage, intrauterine growth restriction, and preeclampsia.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Zhang ◽  
Trieu Le ◽  
Ryan Grabau ◽  
Zahra Mohseni ◽  
Hoejeong Kim ◽  
...  

AbstractCell-cell fusion or syncytialization is fundamental to the reproduction, development and homeostasis of multicellular organisms. In addition to various cell-type specific fusogenic proteins, cell surface externalization of phosphatidylserine (PS), a universal eat-me signal in apoptotic cells, has been observed in different cell-fusion events. Nevertheless, molecular underpinnings of PS externalization and cellular mechanisms of PS-facilitated cell-cell fusion are unclear. Here we report that TMEM16F, a Ca2+-activated phospholipid scramblase (CaPLSase), plays an indispensable role in placental trophoblast fusion by translocating PS to the cell surface independent of apoptosis. Consistent with its essential role in trophoblast fusion, the placentas from TMEM16F-deficient mice exhibit deficiency in syncytialization, placental developmental defects and perinatal lethality. Our findings thus identify a cell-cell fusion mechanism by which TMEM16F CaPLSase-dependent externalization of PS serves as a critical cell fusion signal to facilitate trophoblast syncytialization and placental development.


2008 ◽  
Vol 82 (23) ◽  
pp. 11837-11850 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam L. Vanarsdall ◽  
Brent J. Ryckman ◽  
Marie C. Chase ◽  
David C. Johnson

ABSTRACT Herpesviruses use a cascade of interactions with different cell surface molecules to gain entry into cells. In many cases, this involves binding to abundant glycosaminoglycans or integrins followed by interactions with more limited cell surface proteins, leading to fusion with cellular membranes. Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) has the ability to infect a wide variety of human cell types in vivo. However, very little is known about which HCMV glycoproteins mediate entry into various cell types, including relevant epithelial and endothelial cells. For other herpesviruses, studies of cell-cell fusion induced by viral proteins have provided substantial information about late stages of entry. In this report, we describe the fusion of epithelial, endothelial, microglial, and fibroblast cells in which HCMV gB and gH/gL were expressed from nonreplicating adenovirus vectors. Fusion frequently involved the majority of cells, and gB and gH/gL were both necessary and sufficient for fusion, whereas no fusion occurred when either glycoprotein was omitted. Coexpression of UL128, UL130, and UL131 did not enhance fusion. We concluded that the HCMV core fusion machinery consists of gB and gH/gL. Coimmunoprecipitation indicated that HCMV gB and gH/gL can interact. Importantly, expression of gB and gH/gL in trans (gB-expressing cells mixed with other gH/gL-expressing cells) resulted in substantial fusion. We believe that this is the first description of a multicomponent viral fusion machine that can be split between cells. If gB and gH/gL must interact for fusion, then these molecules must reach across the space between apposing cells. Expression of gB and gH/gL in trans with different cell types revealed surface molecules that are required for fusion on HCMV-permissive cells but not on nonpermissive cells.


1977 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-188
Author(s):  
S. Knutton ◽  
D. Jackson ◽  
M. Ford

Fusion of erythrocytes and HeLa cells with Sendai and Newcastle disease viruses has been studied by scanning electron microscopy. Most virus particles are spherical but vary in diameter from approximately 200 to approximately 600 nm. At 4 degrees C virus particles bind randomly to the cell surface and at high cell densities cross-linking of adjacent cells by virus particles results in cell agglutination. Cell-cell fusion takes place when the agglutinated cell suspension is warmed to 37 degrees C. Fusion is initiated at sites of cell-cell contact and is accompanied in all cases by cell swelling. In the case of suspension HeLa cells, virally mediated cell swelling involves an ‘unfolding’ of cell surface microvilli and results in the formation of smooth-surfaced single or fused cells. With erythrocytes, swelling results in haemolysis. There is a dramatic reduction in the numbers of virus particles bound to cells following fusion.


2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (24) ◽  
pp. 13889-13903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Beitia Ortiz de Zarate ◽  
Lilia Cantero-Aguilar ◽  
Magalie Longo ◽  
Clarisse Berlioz-Torrent ◽  
Flore Rozenberg

ABSTRACT The use of endocytic pathways by viral glycoproteins is thought to play various functions during viral infection. We previously showed in transfection assays that herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) glycoprotein B (gB) is transported from the cell surface back to the trans-Golgi network (TGN) and that two motifs of gB cytoplasmic tail, YTQV and LL, function distinctly in this process. To investigate the role of each of these gB trafficking signals in HSV-1 infection, we constructed recombinant viruses in which each motif was rendered nonfunctional by alanine mutagenesis. In infected cells, wild-type gB was internalized from the cell surface and concentrated in the TGN. Disruption of YTQV abolished internalization of gB during infection, whereas disruption of LL induced accumulation of internalized gB in early recycling endosomes and impaired its return to the TGN. The growth of both recombinants was moderately diminished. Moreover, the fusion phenotype of cells infected with the gB recombinants differed from that of cells infected with the wild-type virus. Cells infected with the YTQV-mutated virus displayed reduced cell-cell fusion, whereas giant syncytia were observed in cells infected with the LL-mutated virus. Furthermore, blocking gB internalization or impairing gB recycling to the cell surface, using drugs or a transdominant negative form of Rab11, significantly reduced cell-cell fusion. These results favor a role for endocytosis in virus replication and suggest that gB intracellular trafficking is involved in the regulation of cell-cell fusion.


2006 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 1817-1825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariko Kobayashi ◽  
Michael C. Bennett ◽  
Theodore Bercot ◽  
Ila R. Singh

ABSTRACT Hepatitis C virus (HCV) envelope proteins mediate the entry of virus into cells by binding to cellular receptors, resulting in fusion of the viral membrane with the host cell membrane and permitting the viral genome to enter the cytoplasm. We report the development of a robust and reproducible cell-cell fusion assay using envelope proteins from commonly occurring genotypes of HCV. The assay scored HCV envelope protein-mediated fusion by the production of fluorescent green syncytia and allowed us to elucidate many aspects of HCV fusion, including the pH of fusion, cell types that permit viral entry, and the conformation of envelope proteins essential for fusion. We found that fusion could be specifically inhibited by anti-HCV antibodies and by at least one peptide. We also generated a number of insertional mutations in the envelope proteins and tested nine of these using the fusion assay. We demonstrate that this fusion assay is a powerful tool for understanding the mechanism of HCV-mediated fusion, elucidating mutant function, and testing antiviral agents.


2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M. Phillips ◽  
Tom Gallagher ◽  
Susan R. Weiss

ABSTRACT The coronavirus (CoV) S protein requires cleavage by host cell proteases to mediate virus-cell and cell-cell fusion. Many strains of the murine coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) have distinct, S-dependent organ and tissue tropisms despite using a common receptor, suggesting that they employ different cellular proteases for fusion. In support of this hypothesis, we found that inhibition of endosomal acidification only modestly decreased entry, and overexpression of the cell surface protease TMPRSS2 greatly enhanced entry, of the highly neurovirulent MHV strain JHM.SD relative to their effects on the reference strain, A59. However, TMPRSS2 overexpression decreased MHV structural protein expression, release of infectious particles, and syncytium formation, and endogenous serine protease activity did not contribute greatly to infection. We therefore investigated the importance of other classes of cellular proteases and found that inhibition of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)- and a disintegrin and metalloprotease (ADAM)-family zinc metalloproteases markedly decreased both entry and cell-cell fusion. Suppression of virus by metalloprotease inhibition varied among tested cell lines and MHV S proteins, suggesting a role for metalloprotease use in strain-dependent tropism. We conclude that zinc metalloproteases must be considered potential contributors to coronavirus fusion. IMPORTANCE The family Coronaviridae includes viruses that cause two emerging diseases of humans, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), as well as a number of important animal pathogens. Because coronaviruses depend on host protease-mediated cleavage of their S proteins for entry, a number of protease inhibitors have been proposed as antiviral agents. However, it is unclear which proteases mediate in vivo infection. For example, SARS-CoV infection of cultured cells depends on endosomal acid pH-dependent proteases rather than on the cell surface acid pH-independent serine protease TMPRSS2, but Zhou et al. (Antiviral Res 116:76–84, 2015, doi:10.1016/j.antiviral.2015.01.011) found that a serine protease inhibitor was more protective than a cathepsin inhibitor in SARS-CoV-infected mice. This paper explores the contributions of endosomal acidification and various proteases to coronavirus infection and identifies an unexpected class of proteases, the matrix metalloproteinase and ADAM families, as potential targets for anticoronavirus therapy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (22) ◽  
pp. 2603-2605
Author(s):  
Elizabeth H. Chen

It is an incredible honor to receive the Woman in Cell Biology Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Research. My lab works on cell–cell fusion, an indispensable process in the conception, development, and physiology of multicellular organisms. In this essay, I reflect on my curiosity-led journey, which uncovered some unexpected mechanisms underlying cell–cell fusion.


2003 ◽  
Vol 77 (12) ◽  
pp. 6731-6742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina M. Cairns ◽  
Richard S. B. Milne ◽  
Manuel Ponce-de-Leon ◽  
Deanna K. Tobin ◽  
Gary H. Cohen ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT In alphaherpesviruses, glycoprotein B (gB), gD, gH, and gL are essential for virus entry. A replication-competent gL-null pseudorabies virus (PrV) (B. G. Klupp and T. C. Mettenleiter, J. Virol. 73:3014-3022, 1999) was shown to express a gDgH hybrid protein that could replace gD, gH, and gL in cell-cell fusion and null virus complementation assays. To study this phenomenon in herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), we constructed four gDgH chimeras, joining the first 308 gD amino acids to various gH N-terminal truncations. The chimeras were named for the first amino acid of gH at which each was truncated: 22, 259, 388, and 432. All chimeras were immunoprecipitated with both gD and gH antibodies to conformational epitopes. Normally, transport of gH to the cell surface requires gH-gL complex formation. Chimera 22 contains full-length gH fused to gD308. Unlike PrV gDgH, chimera 22 required gL for transport to the surface of transfected Vero cells. Interestingly, although chimera 259 failed to reach the cell surface, chimeras 388 and 432 exhibited gL-independent transport. To examine gD and gH domain function, each chimera was tested in cell-cell fusion and null virus complementation assays. Unlike PrV gDgH, none of the HSV-1 chimeras substituted for gL for fusion. Only chimera 22 was able to replace gH for fusion and could also replace either gH or gD in the complementation assay. Surprisingly, this chimera performed very poorly as a substitute for gD in the fusion assay despite its ability to complement gD-null virus and bind HSV entry receptors (HveA and nectin-1). Chimeras 388 and 432, which contain the same portion of gD as that in chimera 22, substituted for gD for fusion at 25 to 50% of wild-type levels. However, these chimeras functioned poorly in gD-null virus complementation assays. The results highlight the fact that these two functional assays are measuring two related but distinct processes.


2014 ◽  
Vol 207 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nah-Young Shin ◽  
Hyewon Choi ◽  
Lynn Neff ◽  
Yumei Wu ◽  
Hiroaki Saito ◽  
...  

Cell–cell fusion is an evolutionarily conserved process that leads to the formation of multinucleated myofibers, syncytiotrophoblasts and osteoclasts, allowing their respective functions. Although cell–cell fusion requires the presence of fusogenic membrane proteins and actin-dependent cytoskeletal reorganization, the precise machinery allowing cells to fuse is still poorly understood. Using an inducible knockout mouse model to generate dynamin 1– and 2–deficient primary osteoclast precursors and myoblasts, we found that fusion of both cell types requires dynamin. Osteoclast and myoblast cell–cell fusion involves the formation of actin-rich protrusions closely associated with clathrin-mediated endocytosis in the apposed cell. Furthermore, impairing endocytosis independently of dynamin also prevented cell–cell fusion. Since dynamin is involved in both the formation of actin-rich structures and in endocytosis, our results indicate that dynamin function is central to the osteoclast precursors and myoblasts fusion process, and point to an important role of endocytosis in cell–cell fusion.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifang Liu ◽  
Yanhui Hu ◽  
Joshua Shing Shun Li ◽  
Jonathan Rodiger ◽  
Aram Comjean ◽  
...  

Multicellular organisms rely on cell-cell communication to exchange information necessary for developmental processes and metabolic homeostasis. Cell-cell communication pathways can be inferred from transcriptomic datasets based on ligand-receptor (L-R) expression. Recently, data generated from single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) have enabled L-R interaction predictions at an unprecedented resolution. While computational methods are available to infer cell-cell communication in vertebrates such a tool does not yet exist for Drosophila. Here, we generated a high confidence list of L-R pairs for the major fly signaling pathways and developed FlyPhoneDB, a quantification algorithm that calculates interaction scores to predict L-R interactions between cells. At the FlyPhoneDB user interface, results are presented in a variety of tabular and graphical formats to facilitate biological interpretation. To demonstrate that FlyPhoneDB can effectively identify active ligands and receptors to uncover cell-cell communication events, we applied FlyPhoneDB to Drosophila scRNA-seq data sets from adult midgut, abdomen, and blood, and demonstrate that FlyPhoneDB can readily identify previously characterized cell-cell communication pathways. Altogether, FlyPhoneDB is an easy-to-use framework that can be used to predict cell-cell communication between cell types from scRNA-seq data in Drosophila.


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