Drug-induced eRF1 degradation promotes readthrough and reveals a new branch of ribosome quality control.

Suppression of premature termination codons (PTCs) by translational readthrough is a promising strategy to treat a wide variety of severe genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations. Here, we present two potent readthrough promoters-NVS1.1 and NVS2.1-that restore substantial levels of functional full-length CFTR and IDUA proteins in disease models for cystic fibrosis and Hurler syndrome, respectively. In contrast to other readthrough promoters that affect stop codon decoding, the NVS compounds stimulate PTC suppression by triggering rapid proteasomal degradation of the translation termination factor eRF1. Our results show that this occurs by trapping eRF1 in the terminating ribosome, causing ribosome stalls and subsequent ribosome collisions, and activating a branch of the ribosome-associated quality control network, which involves the translational stress sensor GCN1 and the catalytic activity of the E3 ubiquitin ligases RNF14 and RNF25.

A multiparameter screening assay to assess the cytokine-induced expression of endothelial cell adhesion molecules.

Compounds which inhibit endothelial cell inflammatory responses are believed to be of therapeutic value. The cell adhesion molecules E-selectin, ICAM-1, and VCAM-1 play important roles in inflammatory reactions by mediating leukocyte-endothelial interactions. To identify compounds which inhibit the expression of these adhesion molecules following cytokine stimulation we developed an assay which measures E-selectin, ICAM-1, and VCAM-1 in the same experiment. For this, we have taken advantage of the technology of time-resolved fluorimetry, which allows detection of several parameters in parallel, employing anti-E-selectin antibody labeled with europium, and anti-ICAM-1 and anti-VCAM-1 labeled with samarium and terbium, respectively. These antibodies were used to detect the respective antigens in human endothelial cells stimulated with TNFalpha or IL-1beta. In cross-competition assays these antibodies were found to bind specifically to TNF- or IL-1-stimulated cells. This assay, in which three parameters are measured in the same experiment, proved to be robust with signal to noise ratios of 25-35 for E-Selectin, 4-8 for ICAM-1, and 3-9 for VCAM-1. The assay proved to be reproducible in high-throughput screening. The experience with this assay demonstrates that multiple parameters can be measured in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay-type assay on cells by using time-resolved fluorimetry. The possibility of obtaining several parameters from one experiment is feasible under high-throughput screening conditions and is of interest for other experimental setups in which the simultaneous measurement of several parameters is desired.