Interactions between RPS19, mutated in Diamond-Blackfan anemia, and the PIM-1 oncoprotein.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Diamond Blackfan anemia (DBA) is a congenital disease characterized by defective erythroid progenitor maturation. Patients' bone marrow progenitor cells do not respond to erythropoietic growth factors, such as erythropoietin. Mutations in the gene encoding for ribosomal protein (RP) S19 account for 25% of cases of DBA. The link between defective erythropoiesis and RPS19 is still unclear. Two not mutually exclusive hypotheses have been proposed: altered protein synthesis and loss of unknown extraribosomal functions. DESIGN AND METHODS: We used yeast two-hybrid screening and a human liver cDNA library obtained at 19-24 weeks of gestation, when hepatic erythropoiesis is efficient, to search for proteins interacting with RPS19. RESULTS: We found that RPS19 binds PIM-1, an ubiquitous serine-threonine kinase whose expression can be induced in erythropoietic cells by several growth factors, such as erythropoietin. The PIM-1/RPS19 interaction was demonstrated both in vitro and in living cells and led to phosphorylation of RPS19 in an in vitro kinase assay. We also showed that in human 293T cells PIM-1 interacts with ribosomes and may be involved in translational control. Three DBA-associated RPS19 mutations alter the binding between RPS19 and PIM-1. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS: A link between erythropoietic growth factor signaling and RPS19 has been identified for the first time.

Missense mutations associated with Diamond-Blackfan anemia affect the assembly of ribosomal protein S19 into the ribosome.

RPS19 has been identified as the first gene associated with Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA), a rare congenital hypoplastic anemia that includes variable physical malformations. It is mutated in approximately 25% of the patients although doubts remain as to whether DBA clinical phenotype depends on the ribosomal function of RPS19 or on an extra-ribosomal role or on both. RPS19 mRNAs with mutations that introduce premature stop codons or eliminate it are rapidly turned over by the surveillance mechanisms possibly causing a decrease in the RPS19 protein level. A decrease in RPS19 level has been shown to cause a defect in the maturation of 18S ribosomal RNA. Less clear is the effect of missense mutations in RPS19. With the aim of analyzing the functional features of mutated RPS19, we prepared cDNA constructs expressing RPS19 containing 11 missense mutations and a trinucleotide insertion found in DBA patients. After transfection, we analyzed the following properties of the mutated proteins: (i) protein stability, (ii) subcellular localization and (iii) assembly into ribosomes. Our results indicate that some RPS19 mutations alter the capacity of the protein to localize in nucleolar structure and these mutated RPS19 are very unstable. Moreover, none of the mutated RPS19 analyzed in this study, including those proteins that appear localized into the nucleolus, is able to be assembled into mature ribosome.