FLCN and FNIP1 ubiquitination

Ubiquitin is a highly conserved protein consisting of 76 amino acids which can be reversibly conjugated to lysine residues in a variety of target proteins. This post-translational modification is known to be involved in a number of key processes within cells, such as intracellular trafficking and the marking of proteins for degradation by the proteasome. … Read more

Rabs, GEFs and DENNs

Last week’s blog described the crystal structure of the C-terminal domain of FLCN, which was published in a recent paper by Nookala et al. (2012). FLCN was found to have a similar structure to that of DENN domain proteins, which function as Rab guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs). As such, Nookala et al. proposed a … Read more

PTTG1 and clear cell renal cell carcinoma

Deletion of the VHL gene, which is located on chromosome 3p, is known to be involved in the development of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). The second most common cytogenetic abnormality associated with ccRCC is thought to be an amplification of chromosome 5q (Gunawan et al., 2001; Yoshimoto et al., 2007; Toma et al., … Read more