Fundamental Toxicological Sciences

Paper Details

Fundamental Toxicological Sciences
Vol. 8 No. 5 October 20, 2021 p.157-160
Toxicomics Report
Knockdown of deubiquitinating enzyme Usp34 confers resistance to methylmercury in HEK293 cells
  • Gi-Wook Hwang (Laboratory of Molecular and Biochemical Toxicology, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University / Laboratory of Environmental and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University / hwang@tohoku-mpu.ac.jp)
Jong-Mu Kim 1) , Jin-Yong Lee 1) 2) , Min-Seok Kim 1) 3) , Sawako Shindo 4) , Takeshi Kumagai 4) , Akira Naganuma 1) , Gi-Wook Hwang 1) 4)
1) Laboratory of Molecular and Biochemical Toxicology, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University , 2) Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Aichi Gakuin University , 3) Inhalation Toxicology Research Group, Korea Institute of Toxicology, Korea , 4) Laboratory of Environmental and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University
Keywords: Methylmercury, Sensitivity, Deubiquitinating enzyme, Ubiquitin-specific protease 34 (Usp34), RNA interference
Abstracts

We have previously reported that the ubiquitin–proteasome system, which is a selective proteolytic system, plays an important role in determining sensitivity to methylmercury in various cultured cells. Deubiquitinating enzyme is a negative regulator of protein degradation through the ubiquitin–proteasome system. In the present study, we searched for deubiquitinating enzymes that affect sensitivity to methylmercury by RNA interference, and identified ubiquitin-specific protease 34 (Usp34) as a deubiquitinating enzyme that confers methylmercury resistance to HEK293 cells by suppressing gene expression.