Laurence H Pearl | Search PubMed

PubMed2026

Using cancer profiles to identify synthetic lethal therapeutic targets and predictive biomarkers in cancer gene dependency data.

MOTIVATION: Large scale loss-of-function screens utilising CRISPR or siRNA can provide profound insights into the importance of individual genes for the survival of a cancer cell and can drive the identification of therapeutic targets and biomarkers, and the development of targeted drugs. However, the analysis of these data and the substantial bodies of metadata that relate to them, is technically challenging and typically requires substantial expertise in data science and computer coding. RESULTS: To facilitate the analysis of cancer gene dependency data by cancer biologists and clinical scientists, we have developed DepMine-a computational toolkit providing a powerful system for framing complex queries relating cancer gene dependency to the underlying genetic changes that occur in cancer cells. DepMine identifies synthetic lethal relationships between putative target genes and complex 'cancer profiles' built from user-specified combinations of mutations, copy-number variation, and expression levels, and can refine these to optimal biomarker definitions for target dependency. AVAILABILITY: The Python implementation of DepMine and associated data files can be obtained at https://github.com/UOSbioinformaticslab/depmine and is free to academics and Not-For-Profit organisations. The DepMine release referenced in this paper is archived as DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19570601.

Humans↗

PubMed2004

Structural basis for recruitment of the ATPase activator Aha1 to the Hsp90 chaperone machinery.

Hsp90 is a molecular chaperone essential for the activation and assembly of many key eukaryotic signalling and regulatory proteins. Hsp90 is assisted and regulated by co-chaperones that participate in an ordered series of dynamic multiprotein complexes, linked to Hsp90s conformationally coupled ATPase cycle. The co-chaperones Aha1 and Hch1 bind to Hsp90 and stimulate its ATPase activity. Biochemical analysis shows that this activity is dependent on the N-terminal domain of Aha1, which interacts with the central segment of Hsp90. The structural basis for this interaction is revealed by the crystal structure of the N-terminal domain (1-153) of Aha1 (equivalent to the whole of Hch1) in complex with the middle segment of Hsp90 (273-530). Structural analysis and mutagenesis show that binding of N-Aha1 promotes a conformational switch in the middle-segment catalytic loop (370-390) of Hsp90 that releases the catalytic Arg 380 and enables its interaction with ATP in the N-terminal nucleotide-binding domain of the chaperone.

Binding Sites↗