Science Spotlight: New protein degradation mechanism

A group led by  Serac Biosciences AG co-founders Jeffrey Bode and Jacob Corn at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich revealed a new mechanism of protein quality control and degradation in human cells that may have implications for creating targeted protein degradation therapies.

The Nature study authors found that proteins broken due to oxidative stress get marked with a C-terminal amide and rapidly degraded. The mechanism by which these C-term amide-bearing proteins (CTAPs) are broken down involves binding of the enzyme FBXO31 to a multi-protein ubiquitin ligase complex, triggering CTAP ubiquitination and subsequent proteasomal degradation...