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PTPN21 exerts pro-neuronal survival and neuritic elongation via ErbB4/NRG3 signaling
Journal article   Peer reviewed

PTPN21 exerts pro-neuronal survival and neuritic elongation via ErbB4/NRG3 signaling

J.H.C. Plani-Lam, T-C Chow, K-L Siu, W.H. Chau, M-H.J. Ng, S. Bao, C-T Ng, P. Sham, D.K-Y Shum, E. Ingley, …
The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Vol.61, pp.53-62
2015
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Abstract

Although expression quantitative trait locus, eQTL, serves as an explicit indicator of gene-gene associations, challenges remain to disentangle the mechanisms by which genetic variations alter gene expression. Here we combined eQTL and molecular analyses to identify an association between two seemingly non-associated genes in brain expression data from BXD inbred mice, namely Ptpn21 and Nrg3. Using biotinylated receptor tracking and immunoprecipitation analyses, we determined that PTPN21 de-phosphorylates the upstream receptor tyrosine kinase ErbB4 leading to the up-regulation of its downstream signaling. Conversely, kinase-dead ErbB4 (K751R) or phosphatase-dead PTPN21 (C1108S) mutants impede PTPN21-dependent signaling. Furthermore, PTPN21 also induced Elk-1 activation in embryonic cortical neurons and a novel Elk-1 binding motif was identified in a region located 1919 bp upstream of the NRG3 initiation codon. This enables PTPN21 to promote NRG3 expression through Elk-1, which provides a biochemical mechanism for the PTPN21-NRG3 association identified by eQTL. Biologically, PTPN21 positively influences cortical neuronal survival and, similar to Elk-1, it also enhances neuritic length. Our combined approaches show for the first time, a link between NRG3 and PTPN21 within a signaling cascade. This may explain why these two seemingly unrelated genes have previously been identified as risk genes for schizophrenia.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Citation topics
1 Clinical & Life Sciences
1.25 Molecular & Cell Biology - Cancer, Autophagy & Apoptosis
1.25.1481 Phosphatases and Rasopathies
Web Of Science research areas
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Cell Biology
ESI research areas
Biology & Biochemistry
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