Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2004 Dec 16;23(58):9314-25.
doi: 10.1038/sj.onc.1208331.

WIPI-1alpha (WIPI49), a member of the novel 7-bladed WIPI protein family, is aberrantly expressed in human cancer and is linked to starvation-induced autophagy

Tassula Proikas-Cezanne  1 , Scott Waddell, Anja Gaugel, Tancred Frickey, Andrei Lupas, Alfred Nordheim
Affiliations

WIPI-1alpha (WIPI49), a member of the novel 7-bladed WIPI protein family, is aberrantly expressed in human cancer and is linked to starvation-induced autophagy

Tassula Proikas-Cezanne et al. Oncogene. .

Abstract

WD-repeat proteins are regulatory beta-propeller platforms that enable the assembly of multiprotein complexes. Here, we report the functional and bioinformatic analysis of human WD-repeat protein Interacting with PhosphoInosides (WIPI)-1alpha (WIPI49/Atg18), a member of a novel WD-repeat protein family with autophagic capacity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Caenorhabditis elegans, recently identified as phospholipid-binding effectors. Our phylogenetic analysis divides the WIPI protein family into two paralogous groups that fold into 7-bladed beta-propellers. Structural modeling identified two evolutionary conserved interaction sites in WIPI propellers, one of which may bind phospholipids. Human WIPI-1alpha has LXXLL signature motifs for nuclear receptor interactions and binds androgen and estrogen receptors in vitro. Strikingly, human WIPI genes were found aberrantly expressed in a variety of matched tumor tissues including kidney, pancreatic and skin cancer. We found that endogenous hWIPI-1 protein colocalizes in part with the autophagosomal marker LC3 at punctate cytoplasmic structures in human melanoma cells. In addition, hWIPI-1 accumulated in large vesicular and cup-shaped structures in the cytoplasm when autophagy was induced by amino-acid deprivation. These cytoplasmic formations were blocked by wortmannin, a classic inhibitor of PI-3 kinase-mediated autophagy. Our data suggest that WIPI proteins share an evolutionary conserved function in autophagy and that autophagic capacity may be compromised in human cancers.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types