244 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2024
    1. Protein expression and purification

      I am curious if there were differences in expression or yield between the different proteins. I could see that being important if the thought is to produce a bunch of this protein and use it to degrade PET.

    2. The position and orientation of the catalytic triad (D210, H242, and S265) overlaps perfectly with the catalytic triad in the parent enzymes

      This is interesting! Do the protein design methods you used specifically try to preserve the catalytically active parts of the protein or was this something that you assessed when picking proteins? If not, might that be useful to consider when selecting proteins to test? For example, maybe the proteins with negligible activity had a lot of differences in the triad. That seems like something you could catch before purifying and testing activity.

    3. Conclusions

      I'd love to see some discussion around your working hypothesis as it seems that you maybe disproved it? It might even be cool to have a bivariate plot with thermal stability on one axis and enzymatic activity on the other to see if there is a correlation. Additionally, because you tried 3 different methods to generate proteins and then evaluated them the same way, it might be useful to talk about which worked best, why that might be, pros/cons of the three methods, etc.

    4. data not shown

      Again, it would be interesting to see this data, even if you just put it in the supplement!

    5. data not shown

      This sounds like such a cool result, it would be great to be able to see the data.

    6. For the P06 and P08 variants, we did not set out to determine their melting temperature because of their negligible enzymatic activity

      It might still be useful to determine the Tm for these proteins to help with testing the working hypothesis that you discussed in the intro that proteins with higher stability have higher enzymatic activity.

  2. Jul 2024
    1. The results validated the computational model, concluding that this domain is predominantly helical in nature. The confidence built by this study now pushes us to move ahead in order to solve the atomic structure of this critical domain by crystallography or NMR spectroscopy, which in turn will decipher the exact mechanism by which this essential protein engages DNA to cater to various functions

      What a cool paper combining computational modeling of protein structure with experimental analysis to support it! I'm excited for the next steps listed here (crystallography or NMR) to see how those results line up with what was found here, but either way, I'm a big fan of the combined computational and experimental work!

    2. we used Raman spectroscopy. Raman spectrum of the buffer (control) is displayed in black, whereas that of the Myb domain is displayed in red

      Did you do technical replicates? I'm curious about how consistent the data is between trials.

    3. Graphical quantification of intensity of the protein-DNA complex formed

      I'm curious if you happened to do replicates of this and/or stats to determine if your quantification is significant?

    4. (Accession Number: Q62187)

      Love that you included the accession number and a direct link to the sequence! It can be a pain when papers don't reference the exact protein that they're working with. It might be worth explicitly stating how you identified the Myb domain.

    5. AlphaFold, SWISS-MODEL, and Robetta predicted compact and ordered structures with a very high percentage of α-helical conformations. While the model predicted by I-TASSER was less compact and ordered compared to the models generated by the above servers. All models have very similar and reliable statistics as per the overall SAVESv6.0 results. In summary, the structural integrity and statistics of the models derived from both homology and ab-initio methods showed considerable consistency. This confirms the reliability of Robetta and other models (excluding I-TASSER) for further computational analysis.

      I really appreciate the direct comparison of the 4 methods on a single sample. This is totally beyond the scope of the paper, but I wonder if these observations would hold true with other proteins/protein domains.

    6. 27%

      Is this not just because you're BLASTing a single domain against a database of mostly full proteins?

    7. protein

      It's a bit confusing to refer to the Myb domain as a "protein" when you aren't talking about the full-length protein.

    8. neither an in silico nor a physically determined structure of the individual domains of TTF1 is available to date

      Just curious if there's a structure available of the full protein? It might be useful context to see how your analysis of the Myb domain fits with the full structure (if it's available).

    9. DDB1

      Do you know the domains that these different interacting proteins bind? The first sentence suggests that you do, and it might be useful for better understanding the particular domain that you focus on here (Myb) to know what interacts with it.

    10. ranging from 323 to 445 amino acids

      This is very minor, but when I first read this (before looking at Figure 1), I thought this phrase meant that this specific region was 323-445 amino acids long. It might be less confusing to use language like "a specific region located between amino acid 323 and 445"? Otherwise, this section introducing the functional domains is very thorough and got me right up to speed on TTF1!

  3. Jun 2024
    1. Introduction

      This is an interesting deep dive into the ADF family, particularly in Arabidopsis! There's a ton of data and I appreciate the open code!

    2. Dataset S1

      Are these datasets provided somewhere? I might have missed them, but couldn't find them!

    3. Fig

      Are motifs 3 and 6 related since they're both green?

    4. The longest genome sequence is ADF (AT3G45990; Putative), at 3,359bp, and the shortest is 945 bp (ADF11). The average length is 1,490 bp for all ADFs. Next, we analyzed the physicochemical properties of ADF proteins, including amino acid length, molecular weight (MW), theoretical pI, aliphatic index, and the grand average of hydropathy (GRAVY) (Table 1). The amino acids length of each ADF was found to be similar, ranging from 133 to 150. The molecular weight varied from 15,820 kDa (AtADF7) to 17.942 kDa (ADF2), while the GRAVY of all ADF genes were below zero. The maximum aliphatic index value was 83.53 (AtADF4), and the minimum value was 70.07 (AtADF6). The results of hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity analysis indicated that all ADF family proteins are hydrophilic proteins.

      Can you draw any sort of hypotheses from this analysis? It's a lot of data and I'm just wondering exactly what it all means in the context of the rest!

    5. cantates

      I think this is maybe supposed to be "candidates"?

    6. ADF subclass I in Arabidopsis includes ADF1, ADF2, ADF3, and ADF4,

      Is it known if any of these ADF proteins have overlapping functions? Can they compensate for another if needed?

    7. As shown in Fig 2b,

      I don't see a Fig 2b.

    8. divided into three clusters, as shown in Fig. 3a

      The clusters aren't super obvious to me, could you maybe highlight the 3 clusters in the figure?

    9. ADF genes with other homologous genes,

      I'm curious how similar these genes are within organisms and between organisms. Do you have sequence alignments or sequence identities you could share to give an idea?

    10. 38 eukaryotic species with 1 bacteria species as outgroup. The protein sequence data of selected species, which presents each phylum of eukaryotes, were download from Ensembl and Ensembl Plants database

      Apart from choosing one to represent each phylum of eukaryotes, how did you pick these specific species? You might have this somewhere up ahead, but it could also be nice to have a table of these species and the other set of 8 species.

    11. With 25,498 predicted protein-coding genes, 69% of these have predicted functions based on sequence comparisons and similarities to known proteins. However, approximately only 9% of the genes have been studied or characterized through experimental methods. The remaining 30% remain without any predicted function (Wigge and Weigel, 2001).

      I really like the inclusion of the stats to highlight the need for characterization of these proteins! This is no big deal but the last sentence of this chunk (The remaining 30% remain without any...) has slightly odd wording. Maybe something like "the remaining 30% lack functional annotation or characterization"?

  4. May 2024
    1. Our results show that topological defects in the actin order are necessary to shape the head of the regenerating Hydra, supporting the notion that actin topological defects are mechanical organizers of morphogenesis.

      This is a really cool study of the role of mechanosensing and actin in regeneration using a very cool model! I also really enjoyed all the microscopy images. Looking forward to learning more about Hydra and actin in future papers!

    2. To test further the requirement of actin-defects, we next turned our attention to head-regenerating tissues that failed to regenerate under compression

      I like the use of these for comparison! It's cool that you have built-in examples of when things didn't work to use for a comparison like this.

    3. 360° light-sheet microscopy confirmed the toroidal topology of the persistent non-regenerative tissues, hereafter called toroids.

      Woah cool images!

    4. Head-regenerating tissues inherited the actin nematic order, with a single topological defect on the basal disc, and longitudinal fibres expanding towards the regenerating wound

      It might be helpful to annotate an image with what these different things look like or add arrows to the existing figure for folks who aren't as familiar with looking at these images.

    5. orientation of head-regenerating tissues impacted the phenotypic distribution more than increasing agarose stiffness

      This is somewhat related to a previous comment, but is the orientation of head-regenerating tissues affected by agarose compression? It's not super clear from the data in extended figure 1a, but it seems like it could be somewhat related since at 0.5% AC there's only lateral orientation.

    6. d,

      It seems like there's quite a bit of phenotypic variation even between these 2 examples of biaxial, could this variation be meaningful?

    7. Uniaxial animals with ectopic tentacles were also observed (25% at 0.5% AC), similar to the ectopic tentacles observed in weak Wnt3 overexpressing mutants

      It might be worth showing what this looks like (especially compared to the biaxial ones) in the main figure since you do have a portion of organisms with this ectopic tentacle phenotype.

    8. e observed that under the softest 0.5% agarose compression (0.5% AC), all head-regenerating tissues oriented laterally

      Is this expected? Is it because they're less squished so they have room to orient? Just wondering about the biological significance

  5. Apr 2024
    1. In summary, this study advances our understanding of septin distribution and phylogenetic groupings, shedding light on their ancestral features, potential function, and early evolution.

      I really enjoyed reading this paper about septin evolution! It opens the door to help us understand more about septins by looking outside of Opisthokonta. The paper is also thorough, and in addition to learning about their newly identified septins, I was also able to learn a lot about septin biology in general. I'm excited to see how this data is used in the future!

    2. It is interesting to speculate that AspE-type Group 5 septins have retained the ancestral trait to form a homomeric G-dimer using their R-fingers.

      This is a really cool section! I love the use of structural analysis + phylogeny to uncover something really cool about the function of these proteins.

    3. except for Gig2 which appears to be variable in Group 8

      Do you have any ideas about the functional consequences of this variability? Do you think it could affect the G-interface dimerization?

    4. septins

      I'm curious how/why you selected these specific species and how you decided which septin to use within each species?

    5. BLASTP

      It sounds like your searches were mostly sequence-based. I know septins can be large and can contain regions of disorder, which may make them difficult to work with structurally. However, I'm curious if you think you might identify more septin sequences using a structure-based search (like Foldseek)?

    6. Excavata, Archeaplastida, Rhizaria, Heterokonta, and Alveolata

      Was your search limited to these taxa or did you search more broadly as well?

  6. Mar 2024
    1. Translating the input into a UniProt ID: AlphaFind supports three forms of input: UniProt ID, PBD ID, and Gene symbol. Since UniProt ID is internally used to identify a protein, other forms of input must be translated into UniProt ID using publicly available APIs. For PDB ID to UniProt ID conversion, we use: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/pdbe/api/mappings/uniprot/ and Gene symbol to UniProt ID conversion AlphaFind relies on: https://rest.uniprot.org/idmapping.

      One of the main reasons I might use a structural search is if I have a novel protein that maybe isn't in UniProt. I don't know if it's possible with the way your tool works, but it could be a cool thing to think about for the future - is there a way to support user provided or determined PDBs that aren't in UniProt?

    2. Figure

      The examples are really great! It is a bit hard to really see what's happening in the overlays of all the structures. It might be helpful to see overlays for each hit protein with the the input as separate panels or something.

    3. To address this issue, novel searching tools have been developed, e.g., FoldSeek (6), 3D-surfer (7)or Dali server (8).However their functionality has some substantial limitations: they cannot search through the whole AlphaFold DB, and they rely on predefined fold patterns.

      I like that you brought up some of these other tools and described how your tool is different. Are there other benefits that the user might care about? For example, I noticed that the web tool is really fast! This is probably beyond the scope here, but a comparison of these different structure search tools would be useful.

    4. Limitations

      I appreciate the limitations section! I'm curious if there are plans to eventually incorporate the newer version of the AlphaFold database? Also wondering about things like the PDB database itself and the ESM metagenomic atlas?

    5. https://alphafind.fi.muni.cz.

      I really appreciate this super easy to use and fast web application tool for finding proteins similar to an input!

  7. Feb 2024
    1. Here, I present a Google Colaboratory-based pipeline, named LazyAF, which integrates the existing ColabFold BATCH to streamline the process of medium-scale protein-protein interaction prediction.

      Thanks so much for sharing this tool! I really enjoyed reading about it and can't wait to try it myself.

    2. Supplementary Note 1

      I really love this walkthrough!!

    3. Figure 3.

      You mentioned that several of the top predicted PPIs have been previously experimentally validated. It would be interesting to know which of these annotations predicted by your pipeline are supported by experimental validation. Could you somehow denote this in this figure?

    4. Figure

      Could you include a key with the color scale for the heatmap?

    5. uggesting that a score of co-folding between protein A (bait):protein B (candidate) sometimes is different from that of a co-folding between protein B (bait):protein A (candidate).

      If you run the analysis multiple times, do you see variation between runs or is it only when you switch the chains?

    6. the sequence of the ‘bait’ and that of a ‘candidate’ joined via a colon.

      I'm curious if you're pipeline supports more than 2 proteins. For example, could I put in a handful of proteins to see if they form a complex?

    7. a ‘bait’ protein

      I think based on your analysis that the answer to this question is yes, but can you do multiple bait proteins as well as multiple candidate proteins? Also curious about how many proteins this can handle?

  8. Jan 2024
    1. In this work, we focus on applying functional prediction methods based on both sequence and structure to analyze the hypothetical proteins of the pathogenic agents that cause these diseases: T. cruzi (Tcr), T. brucei brucei (Tbr), T. brucei gambiense (Tbg), L. infantum (Lif), L. donovani (Ldo), and L. braziliensis (Lbz).

      This is a really cool analysis combining sequence-based and structure-based functional domain prediction! It provides tons of new info about trypanosomatid biology (even giving us some possible new drug targets!), but could also tell us a lot about sequence/structure conservation and how we might leverage this for annotation and drug target ID purposes.

    2. SEquence-Based Functional Prediction (SEBFP) and Structure-Based Functional Prediction (STBFP) results

      It would be interesting to think about how your sequence-based predictions and structure-based predictions compare. For example, do you have proteins that were similar based on sequence but not structure and vice versa? And even between different sequence-based and structure-based methods since you applied a bunch of tools? This could be an interesting opportunity to learn more about sequence and structure conservation in an organism that's more distant from humans!

    3. Structure-Based Functional Prediction (STBFP) results, which identified the IFT70 protein (PDBid: 4UZY) [100]. IFT70 is present in the IFT train which is a crucial component of the intraflagellar transport protein complex responsible for cyclogenesis, an evolutionarily conserved transport process involving the bidirectional movement of particles within cilia [101].

      It might be useful to put this information sooner. I was confused why you were talking about IFT70 previously and this context was really helpful!

    4. In the upcoming sections,

      Because it seems like you're sort of starting a new section here, it might be useful to add a title so that it doesn't run together with the previous section.

    5. our alignment results indicate a higher identity of 50% between these species, with the lowest being 44% between Tcr and Lif.

      I love this bit of information about what you found in your analyses. It's very helpful for thinking about these proteins.

    6. TRX

      Would also mention what this abbreviation stands for in case you have readers that aren't super familiar with this protein domain.

    7. AAA 18 domain

      Again would be interesting to include what you found in your analysis about AAA 18 domains.

    8. ACBP

      Might be good to include what this abbreviation means when you first reference it. Would also be useful to include some information about what you found in your analysis that led you to include this section.

    9. Another server

      I'm sure you considered it, but you could also try employing Foldseek to search for matches in a couple subsets of the AlphaFold database as well as CATH50, MGnify, and others. It's also super fast! https://search.foldseek.com/search

    10. we identified the UFC1 and Ufm1 domains, both of which play roles in the ubiquitination process

      It would be cool to see a figure showing how similar the sequences and structures are of these proteins compared to known versions. Since it seems like we know quite a bit about them (ex that muts like Arg23Gln can affect binding in UFC1), it would be interesting to see if particular important residues are conserved.

    11. the same function must be predicted in at least eight SEBFP tools and two STBFP tools

      Why these criteria? Also by requiring that you get matches in both the sequence based and structure based tools, are you missing proteins that maybe have very similar structures (and possibly function) but very different sequences?

    12. ouch

      Should this be "out"?

  9. Dec 2023
    1. The differential regulation between actin structures allows us to specifically target and deplete each structure for our investigations.

      Very cool! I love studies taking advantage of this differential regulation to assay how different parts of the actin cytoskeleton contribute to cellular functions!

    2. A.

      I wonder if the intensities of Cdc42 are different in these various treatment conditions? for example, it looks like there's lots more signal in the for3 mutants, but this could just be the images shown here. Additionally, the changes in the level of nuclear localization here are interesting!

    3. indicating that linear actin cables do not facilitate anticorrelation between the two ends

      Maybe it's just the individual cells in the image, but the oscillations, while still present, do look somewhat different in the for3 mutants. For example, according to the red arrows, the frequency of oscillations between the DMSO treated and for3 mutants do not look the same in Figure 1A. I agree with Cameron that showing something like supplemental figure 1A would be super helpful, because with that you can really see the difference between DMSO treated/for3 mutants and CK-666 or LatA treated cells.

  10. Nov 2023
    1. Abstract

      Really fun paper that digs into protein function with a lot of cool assays! Overall, I really enjoyed reading it!

    2. The presence or absence of the CTD in the CsoS2 and wtMR constructs is a proxy for CsoS2A and CsoS2B, suggesting that these two proteins may contribute differently to the physical properties of the nascent carboxysome.

      Could it also be related to the lack on NTD in the wtMR construct?

    3. Repeat 7 was left out of the wtMR construct because it occurs after the ribosomal slip site in Repeat 6, in an effort to eliminate potential confounding variables between the CsoS2A and CsoS2B isoforms.

      I understand the effort to eliminate confounding variables. However, based on the western blots in Fig S3, it seems like in most cases in your strains, you're ending up with CsoS2B (which I think is the long isoform?), but here you're forcing all mutants to the short version? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding! Either way, this part is a bit confusing and I'd love a bit of clarification here.

    4. ysteines play a non-essential structural role that strengthens the overall integrity of the complex, but may not be necessary for its assembly or function.

      Do you think this would be the case if you had mutated the cysteine to an alanine?

    5. Fig. S2

      This is super helpful and it might be worth moving some version to the main text or adding a table of your mutants or something since you have so many and it can be a little tricky to keep track of.

    6. All strains expressed similar amounts of CsoS2 (Fig. S3), though it should be noted that only CsoS2B was detected; it is likely that expression from the neutral site instead of the native operon reduced ribosomal frameshifting responsible for the production of non-essential CsoS2A.

      Would be great if you could quantify these results? I also think it could be helpful to check all mutants with both antibodies to compare 2B to 2A for all instead of just the VTG mutants.

    7. C to S

      I totally see the reasoning behind mutating to C to S instead of A. However, I think it would also be interesting to see if mutating this to an A would cause further functional changes, especially because you changed the rest to A.

    8. Although both carboxysome lineages contain scaffolding proteins, these proteins are related in function alone; they have no sequence or structural similarity.

      This is super interesting! Would love some more information - could you provide citations and/or data to demonstrate this?

    1. Here we discovered that Plasmodium ARPC1 constitutes part of a highly divergent, non-canonical Arp2/3 complex,

      I really loved reading this paper! Although actin and the Arp2/3 complex are well-studied proteins in mammalian cells and common model organisms, this paper really highlights how much we still have to learn about both actin biology and especially the Arp2/3 complex!

    2. However, we could not identify any orthologues to these proteins in the Plasmodium genomes (51). The mode of Arp2/3 activation thus remains to be determined.

      This is also something that we encountered in Chlamydomonas! I wonder if a structural search for some of those NPFs might give you better results than a sequence search.

    3. While the canonical Arp2/3 complex consists of seven subunits, we have only identified five orthologues.

      It might be helpful to discuss the roles of the different subunits in actual complex function. For example, ARPC2 and ARPC4 generally form the primary connection with the mother filament and Arp2 and Arp3 help nucleate the new daughter filament. You identified those essential subunits! It might also be helpful to talk a bit about other non-canonical Arp2/3 complexes throughout the tree of life (for example Chlamydomonas), and to talk about previous studies where people have mutated or removed a subunit and the complex still retained some function.

    4. We therefore conclude that Plasmodium Arp2/3 nucleates actin, much like canonical Arp2/3 complexes

      I'm curious if there are any other known actin-dependent phenotypes that you could probe with your ARPC1 null to support this more in future work.

    5. Arp2/3 complex is highly diverse and thus not bound by the canonical Arp2/3 inhibitor.

      Some docking studies using CK-666 could help support this since you already have the structures available!

    6. CK-666 drastically impaired overall exflagellation rates

      I'm wondering how healthy cells were with this dosage of CK-666? And if you tried any concentrations between 50uM and 250uM?

    7. Including PbARPC1 itself, we thus identified structural homologues to five out of seven subunits of the Arp2/3 complex, including the core proteins Arp2 and Arp3, which suggests the presence of a non-canonical, minimalistic Arp2/3 complex in Plasmodium.

      This section is so cool! I like the model of your putative Arp2 and Arp3 with a couple actin monomers. Did you try modeling a full complex with your identified proteins?

    8. hile we noted that spindle microtubules appeared longer in

      Just pointing out that this sentence appears to be incomplete!

    9. formed axonemes

      I'm curious if there are differences in axoneme formation or structure. I'm not sure about plasmodium cells, but the Arp2/3 complex has been found to be involved in flagellar assembly in other organisms.

    10. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that PbARPC1 is required for normal oocyst growth and sporozoite development, and deletion of ARPC1 leads to a complete block in transmission.

      Very interesting!

    11. The ARPC1 protein sequence is conserved across the genus Plasmodium but shows less than 20% identity to other ARPC1/ARPC1 proteins from model species

      I know that you'll get to structure in your work, but was there anything known about structure conservation previously? I know 20% is super low for sequence identity, but I imagine that the structure could potentially be better conserved.

    12. Previous phylogenetic studies identified Plasmodium ARPC1/ARC40, from here on named ARPC1 to be consistent with the most common Arp2/3 complex subunit nomenclature, as the sole conserved subunit of the Arp2/3 complex in Plasmodium.

      Since you mention phylogenetic studies, I'm curious if this apparent loss of most of the Arp2/3 complex is common in Plasmodium's closest relatives or if this is unique to Plasmodium species.

  11. Oct 2023
    1. e most important criteria to define TNTs is to assess their transfer function

      I really loved this section!

    2. Tunneling nanotubes (TNTs)

      A very cool paper, with some very cool images showing tunneling nanotubes in zebrafish embryos!

    3. At 200 µM, CK666 appeared to be toxic to the embryos, that were either dying at early stages or, if survived, had observable tail twist at 48 hpf

      Is there a third intermediate concentration you could try to see if you get an intermediate effect?

    4. Figure 3.

      Panels C and E and the significance labels are a bit confusing. I'm wondering if there's a different a way to display this data?

    5. As a complementary approach to confirm the formation of TNT-like structures through a mechanism distinct from cytokinesis, we conducted clonal labeling of zebrafish embryos.

      I really love this approach, and I think this data is very cool! I don't know much about these specific labels but I'm curious if you could see transfer of colors between cells at all?

    6. 5 minutes after formation

      Could you quantify the lifetime of different types of connections? Just wondering about different ways to classify TNTs vs other types of connections.

    7. We were able to show that connections in the embryo can be formed from two filopodia-like structures, similarly to TNTs in vitro

      I love this figure and video of the two filopodia reaching out and connecting!

    8. Of interest, a portion of CEP55-negative connections had the length above 10 µm, and they could reach up to 30 µm in length

      I'm interested in the thickness of the connections - the bridges seem quite thick.

    9. o be able to differentiate the TNT-like connections we observed from cytokinetic bridges, we micro-injected lifeAct-mKATE-E2A-CEP55-EGFP mRNA that labels actin and the midbody marker CEP55 in the same cells

      This is a clever way to differentiate between cytokinetic bridges and the TNT-like connections, but I don't know that it fully rules out that the TNT-like connections could be related to division. Is there a way to block division and see if you still get TNT-like connections?

    10. Since TNTs in vitro can have different cytoskeletal composition depending on the cell type 19, in order to further characterize zebrafish TNT-like connections, we injected lifeAct-mKATE-E2A-EGFP-tubulin mRNA that labels actin and tubulin of the same cells (Fig. 1E). Quantification showed that the majority of TNT-like connections contained both actin and tubulin, while about 21% contained only actin

      Did you only do this staining and analysis with TNT-like protrusions? It's clear that there's some diversity of the cytoskeletal composition of these structures, but I wonder if compared to other types of protrusions, some pattern might emerge. For example, comparatively, filopodia are likely only actin the majority of the time, making them quite different than these structures.

    11. TNTs are thin (below 1 µm) and long (up to 100 µm) actin-based membranous connections between cells, that allow for membrane and cytoplasmic continuity

      Might be nice to add a citation here since you have specific number values.

    12. developing embryos

      Have these been seen in living embryos before or is your study the first report of this?

  12. Sep 2023
    1. close to the interaction cutoff,

      I'm sort of interested in the pairs that are close to the interaction cutoff but on the expected side. For example, would a pair with an interaction score of like 0.56 or so have the structure and interaction that you would expect? I guess, how accurate is the 0.5 cutoff?

    2. The fact that no recycling is required opens the possibility to apply this procedure at large scale

      This is really exciting! I can think of tons of really interesting hypotheses that could be tested by doing this kind of analysis at a larger scale, and I think your analysis here does a great job opening that up.

    3. meaningless because of the disordered parts

      Do you see other cases of disorder influencing the predictions of binding? Maybe not to this degree, but are there other cases where disordered regions cause a lower or higher ipTM than expected?

    4. There is evidence of physical interaction between these proteins, as detected by affinity purification. However, there is no evidence of direct physical interaction by two-hybrid assay.

      Might consider adding a citation here

    5. The 5 models are drastically different from each other

      Is this similar to what you see with non-interacting pairs? Are the protein structures themselves quite different or just the contact between the two models?

    6. I submitted to AF2 prediction a particularly challenging data set from a previous study

      I really appreciate the use of this previous dataset for this purpose! I went back to the previous paper, and this dataset seems like the perfect fit for this kind of analysis. I think this is a great test of the limits of this particular feature of AlphaFold2 and provides some great insight into what it can be useful for in the future.

  13. Aug 2023
    1. When expressed in PFN1 KO cells, these mutants would sometimes form aggregates inside of mitochondria, causing them to swell and enlarge

      This is really interesting, and I'm curious how often these aggregates show up for the different mutants.

    2. these results suggest a novel function for PFN1 in regulating mitochondria

      This paper is so cool and such a fun read! I found the data that showed PFN1 in the mitochondria (figure 6) especially interesting and the mutant data throughout particularly convincing. I'm looking forward to following this story and learning more about PFN1 and how it affects mitochondria!

    3. Interestingly, the mutants used for this assay have varying effects on PFN1’s ability to operate as an actin assembly factor, from complete to partial loss of function

      I think that the mutant data throughout is quite convincing since they have varying actin polymerization activity. It could be really useful for digging into this more to know a little more about these mutants. Do they block binding to other proteins, affect overall profilin folding or expression, or affect other functions that we know of?

    4. These data show that PFN1 is not located on the surface of the OMM, but rather inside the mitochondria membrane.

      This experiment and this data is so cool!!! I am curious if you think actin is also present inside the mitochondria?

    5. G) Quantification of Parkin foci in PFN1 cells expressing GFP, GFP-PFN1 and GFP-PFN1R88E and the ALS associated mutants M114T, E117G and G118V, showing that rescue was only possible with functional PFN1.

      Are the stars here signifying significance between each mutant and the GFP control or the PFN1 rescue?

    6. Figure 1.

      In Figures 1 and 2, I don't think you mention what the stars represent. I'm guessing that they are the usual significance cutoffs, but you might add them in the legends!

    7. but not mutants deficient in binding actin (Fig. 4M) or those associated with ALS

      M114T looks a bit more promising than the others. I'd be interesting to know more about how this mutant is different!

    8. Decreasing the amount of polymerized actin in control cells by 40-50% with a low overnight dose of Latrunculin A (10-20 nM) (Cisterna et al 2023, in preparation) to approximate the loss of actin caused by PFN1 KO cells, did not result in more mitochondria being delivered to lysosomes (Fig. 2E) or cause an increase in the formation of Parkin foci (Fig. S2).

      Does decreasing the amount of polymerized actin further eventually result in mitochondrial defects and activation of mitophagy? In the discussion you mentioned that this process doesn't actually require that much actin so I wonder if the 50-60% that's left is actually sufficient. Additionally, because profilin has such a complex role in actin function (polymerization promotion, monomer sequestering, ATP hydrolysis promoting), I imagine that it is probably quite difficult to mimic what loss of profilin would look like in this way. Is there some other cellular function that is affected by loss of profilin function that you could use as a readout to show that this is affecting cells in a similar way to loss of profilin?

    9. nterestingly, RNA-seq analysis identified significant changes in expression of genes associated with lysosome/endosome systems and autophagy21 upon the loss of PFN1 expression

      I'm interested in knowing a bit more about this expression dataset in the context of this work. Do actin and related proteins express at normal levels in PFN1 KO cells?

    10. unpainted

      unpaired?

  14. Jul 2023
    1. indicating atleast a partial sequestration of the Arp2/3 complex

      Could you measure the intensity of the Arp3 fluorescence in the cytosol and outside of the aggregates in the HTTQ15 compared to the HTTQ138 cells to see the extent of sequestration? Same with the actin! It might help support some of your conclusions if you can actually point to some numbers and data.

    2. B) Radial speed (left) (µm/ sec) of the CCSs in HTTQ15 hemocytes as a function of radial distance (in µm) from the cell center obtained from time-averaged PIV analysis (see Material and Methods for details). Polar histogram of distribution of the flow-field directions obtained from PIV analysis relative to the polar direction (see Material and Methods for details) (right). The angles are sharply distributed around a value of 180°, showing the centripetal movement of CCSs. C) Graph (left) showing stalled movement of CCSs in HTTQ138 hemocytes. Polar histogram (right) of flow-field directions obtained similar to the HTTQ15 case in B) gives a broad distribution of the angles, indicating the absence of any directional centripetal movement of CCSs in presence of HTTQ138.

      Really striking differences, super cool! I'm curious how many cells were measured to make these graphs and if there were any stats done?

    3. Together our results indicate that Huntingtin aggregates remodel the cellular actin cytoskeleton in a manner rendering the cells stiffer, where it is unable to assist CCS movement. We further demonstrate that an active remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton can override some of the detrimental effects of the aggregates with respect to endocytosis.

      A really interesting paper using some very cool techniques to look at actin (and the Arp2/3 complex!) and clathrin-mediated endocytosis in disease states!

    4. Our results suggest that due to the increased stiffness of HTTQ138 cells CCS movement may be impaired.

      Are there ways to make the cells stiffer without the HTTQ138 defect that could support this statement? Has stiffness been shown to impair CCS movement in previous papers that you could cite here?

    5. Figure 4.

      You might consider some reorganization of figures 2-4 as it would be helpful to see the controls, the knockdown, and the rescue all together in one figure. So for example, putting the Hip1 knockdown and coexpression stuff in the same figure would be helpful so readers don't have to scroll back and forth between figures.

    6. Together these results indicate that increasing the availability of proteins involved in actin reorganization are capable of restoring CME even in the presence of pathogenic aggregates.

      Because you have a lot of proteins that you've found do influence this process, it might be helpful to have a diagram/model maybe at the end showing how each protein is important.

    7. loss of directional movement

      This is a very minor wording thing, but the movement in 2E actually does look quite directional (it's not distributed around the circle), just not the direction that you would expect.

    8. WT or HTTQ15

      This is a bit confusing - are you using WT and HTTQ15 interchangeably or are you showing wild-type in Figure 3A-C instead of of the HTTQ15 expressing cells? I think the HTTQ15 is probably the better control so I'd like to see it in the figure.

  15. May 2023
    1. Our results suggest that the vimentin IF network laterally supports microtubules against compressive buckling forces and further helps to structure the microtubule network, thus possibly leading to a more efficient intracellular transport system along the microtubules.

      Really interesting study with some beautiful microscopy and analysis! Studies looking at interactions between the different cytoskeletal elements are always great, and I'm left wondering how the third biopolymer, actin, factors in.

    2. an-alyze

      Super minor comment but there are a few places throughout the paper where words are randomly hyphenated in the middle of the word.

    3. In the cell interior, however, there is a striking difference: in NIH3T3 cells, we observe a strong alignment, whereas in vim-/- cell, there is no such alignment.

      Very cool!

    4. Microtubule and vimentin IF networks in cells on patterns.

      It would be nice to see images with just microtubules and just vimentin for each condition.

    5. the microtubule networks represented in cyan and the vimentin IF networks shown in magenta

      This might be beyond the scope of this paper or already done somewhere, but the networks look quite different between the two cell shapes even in just wild-type cells. I'm curious if there are any more in depth characterizations between these?

    6. We create circle-and crossbow-shaped fibronectin micropatterns, corresponding to unpolarized and polarized cells

      Do the cytoskeletal and other components of the cell look mostly normal in these compared to cells not grown on these micropatterns?

  16. Apr 2023
    1. Immunofluorescence staining for α-tubulin showed that the protrusions were filled with microtubules

      Do you know if they also typically contain actin based on immunofluorescence or staining?

    2. actin filaments inside the microtubule lumen

      Cofilactin in microtubule lumens?! What an amazing finding and paper! So much cool data here that I think will also lead to tons of really interesting hypotheses

    3. Cofilin is an actin binding protein

      It might be nice to mention and discuss a little bit the link between Cytochalasin D and the actin cytoskeleton. Do you think that this could at all be affecting your results even with the low concentration? I think this could probably just be addressed in the text, but are there other methods to induce these protrusions that you could use as a control to show that this isn't related to Cytochalasin D or could you stain some cells with phalloidin and treat with this low concentration of CytD to show that it isn't affecting filaments?

    4. It is unclear how actin and cofilin get inside the microtubule.

      This is a really interesting question! This is probably outside the scope of this paper, but related to this question, I'm curious about the timescale of formation of the protrusions? How dynamic are they?

    5. CytD

      Does CtyD also decreases this phosphorylation a little? I'm wondering if the few luminal filaments in non-TG treated cells are also likely cofilactin as opposed to bare actin.

    6. 13 protofilaments whereas minor fractions had 12 (2.8%), 14 (3.6%) or 15 (0.3%) protofilaments

      Does the number of protofilaments change throughout the length of the microtubule? Like one end having more or less protofilaments or are they uniform throughout?

    1. this suggests an anti-correlation between regions with high Arp2/3 activity and a cell’s ability to form TNTs

      To really illustrate this it would be helpful to show a bivariate analysis between like number of lamellipodia per cell and number of TNTs per cell for 2B. Then you could actually graphically show this anti-correlation and provide a correlation coefficient to strengthen this conclusion. It would also be interesting to show this with CK-666 treatment as I wondered while reading this if the increase in TNTs/filopodia with CK-666 treatment was accompanied by a decrease in lamellipodia.

    2. Our data suggest a shift in the equilibrium (and usage of common actin proteins players) between branched and linear actin polymerization to form different cell protrusions.

      What a cool paper! Beautiful images and I love papers that deal with this concept of a limited pool of actin in the cell that is directed to its different functions by its interactions with actin binding/interacting proteins.

    3. formin-specific agonist drug IMM-01

      I really like this data with the formin agonist!

    4. background values adjacent to the measured bands.

      I noticed in figure 4A the tubulin loading control isn't super consistent. Did you normalize to your loading control? Might also be worth doing total protein as your loading control instead of tubulin, because it is possilbe that tubulin is being affected since you're probing other cytoskeleton related proteins.

    5. we utilized an optical tweezer (OT) setup to pull nanotubes of comparable lengths to the TNTs observed on the micropatterns to monitor by confocal microscopy F-actin polymerization within the nanotube in control and CK-666-treated conditions

      This experiment is very cool, but I wonder if you could show a similar thing with naturally forming TNTs? Do you see more actin in natural TNTs when the Arp2/3 complex is inhibited? I worry that stretching the cell like this could be causing other things to happen in the cell and isn't fully representative of a TNT forming on its own.

    6. Upon Arp2/3 inhibition with CK-666 (6, 48), we observed a significant increase in the percent of TNT-connected cells on D15, D20 and D30 micropatterns

      It would be really great to see representative images of the data quantified in Figure 2C.

    7. Arpc5

      Interesting that ARPC5 disappeared, but not ARPC5L if I'm reading that correctly?

    8. (b)

      Maybe i'm missing this, but I don't see Eps8 in this map. Might just be worth discussing in the text why it's not there?

    1. left-skewed

      There are a couple of these graphs where we're looking at the distribution of data and there's mention that there's more of a skew in a sample compared to another, but sometimes this is really difficult to see in the graphs. It might be useful to split out arp2 mutants vs arpc2 mutants so that we're comparing 2 instead of 4. It might also be useful if you could include some measure of skew, especially for the ones where you think there might be a difference in skew.

    2. Simultaneous Inhibition of the Arp2/3 Complex and Formins Enhances de novo Actin Filament Nucleation in Arabidopsis thaliana

      What a cool paper! I think papers dealing with different proteins interacting with a single pool of actin are so interesting. Also super awesome that you validate CK-666 in these cells and start dealing with potential off-target effects of SMIFH2 in these cells - so much added value to the field!

    3. CK-666 (0, 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 µM)

      I think you do a great job here and in the next figure validating CK-666 (definitely showing that there isn't added effect in the Arp2/3 complex mutants is great!), but you might consider adding CK-689 as an inactive control just to cover all your bases.

    4. In addition, hypocotyls of arp2-1 and arpc2 were significantly shorter than wild-type siblings at the same time points

      It would be interesting to see specific data points here instead of bars for these graphs. Based on the representative images, it looks like there could be a couple population with different lengths, especially in the arpc2 hypocotyls. If that's the case, it would also be interesting to hear why that might be.

    5. demonstrated the effectiveness

      Do we know that SMIFH2 broadly inhibit all of the formins in Arabidopsis?

    6. We found that side-branched filaments in arp2-1 cells were significantly longer (Fig. 4 C) and filament lifetime was prolonged (Fig. 4 D) compared to the side-branched filaments in wild-type cells

      Interesting, is the hypothesis that some of these formins that nucleate filaments off the side of existing filaments are responsible for these specific branched filaments?

    1. The actin cytoskeleton is tightly controlled by RhoGTPases, actin binding proteins and nucleation-promoting factors to perform fundamental cellular functions. Here, we show that ERK3, an atypical MAPK, directly acts as a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Cdc42 and phosphorylates the ARP3 subunit of the ARP2/3 complex at S418 to promote filopodia formation and actin polymerization, respectively. Consistently, depletion of ERK3 prevented both basal and EGF-dependent Rac1 and Cdc42 activation, maintenance of F-actin content, filopodia formation and epithelial cell migration. Further, ERK3 protein binds directly to the purified ARP2/3 complex and augments polymerization of actin in vitro. ERK3 kinase activity is required for the formation of actin-rich protrusions in mammalian cells. These findings unveil a fundamentally unique pathway employed by cells to control actin-dependent cellular functions.

      I really enjoyed reading this paper - what a great story! It really highlights how little we still know about actin regulation (even in human cells!), but it also does a great job filling in some of that knowledge with this pathway involving this atypical MAPK.

    2. S189 mutants (ERK3 S189A/ERK3 S189D)

      Super interesting! Do these mutants have motility defects too?

    3. Interestingly, we readily detected the ARP2/3 complex subunits ARP3, ARP2 and ARPC1A as well as ERK3 by immunoblots in active Rac1/Cdc42 pull-downs

      Very cool! Did you check other subunits or did they not precipitate?

    4. These data suggest that ERK3 could function as nucleation promoting factor to promote ARP2/3-dependent actin polymerization.

      Woah! Curious if the kinase activity (that you test in the next section) is required for this change in actin polymerization?

    5. These results were corroborated by the colocalization of ERK3 with Cdc42 to the protrusions at the cell leading-edge

      It would be interesting to see this in ERK3 knockdowns as well to see if the localization of Cdc42 changes with loss of ERK3. I'm also curious about the localization of Rac1.

    6. these data suggest that ERK3 likely controls actin cytoskeleton dynamics thereby influencing cell shape, motility and polarized migration.

      By eye, I agree that it looks like cell shape is altered in Figure 1A, but it would be cool to include a quantification (maybe like how round the cells are or something). I also think that Figures 1H-J are relevant here to help connect some dots for this conclusion and show that the loss of ERK3 does cause changes in specific actin dynamics that result in shape and motility defects, but you don't talk about Fig 1H-J until later. Finally, I think the conclusion about polarized migration is more relevant in the next section than at the end of this section.

    7. ERK3 knockdown significantly decreased levels of both basal and EGF-induced GTP-bound Cdc42 and Rac1 in primary (HMEC)

      Are there stats for Figure 2F? It seems like there's more variance with the Rac1 blot quantifications than with the Cdc42 blot quantifications.

    8. S418D-overexpressing cells exhibited F-actin-rich protrusions

      It might be useful to quantify protrusions for all of 6F because it seems like there are definitely some big differences!

    9. These experiments showed that although in cultured cells ERK3 regulated the activity of both Cdc42 and Rac1, it only directly stimulated the GDP-GTP exchange of Cdc42

      I find this interesting also in terms of the effects of ERK3 knockdown on the morphology of the cells and the specific actin structures. You mentioned previously that Rac1 leads to the formation of lamellipodia and Cdc42 leads to the formation of filopodia, and looking at the images of your cells, it looks like filopodia are more affected than lamellipodia. Is that something you noticed looking through your images?

    10. Actin is one of the most abundant and highly conserved proteins with over 95% homology among all isoforms

      You might specify that this is true for human isoforms. There are lots of weird actins out there in other organisms that are well under that 95%

    1. Finally, our biochemical study must be placed in the context of cell-cell junctions

      I think it would be useful to talk again about the effect of the different constructs that you used in the context of what that means biologically in the cell.

    2. We also observed, when the three proteins were combined, an increase in the density and length of actin filaments produced in the presence of profilin

      I think this is obviously quite visible in the images, but it would be interesting to see a quantification of filament length in each case and also the occurrence of these bright bundle-like regions. I know you do this more precisely in the next section but I think this would also help set that section up a little bit.

    3. Observation of the details of single filament elongation revealed that it was regularly interrupted by marked pauses, reflecting capping events of the barbed ends by V1ab4 and Δmod

      It would be super cool to see some images along with these graphs looking at single filament elongation.

    4. actin dynamics observed in cells

      I am interested what this would look like in cells! Maybe a next step?

    5. Representative epifluorescence images of Alexa-488 actin filament bundles observed alone and in the presence of all the combinations of Δmod, V1ab4 and VASP. Conditions: 1.5 μM G-actin (2%Alexa-488-labeled), 0.25 μM Δmod, 0.25 μM V1ab4 and 0.25 μM VASP. Scale bar = 15 μm.

      These are amazing!

    6. Kinetics of actin polymerization were measured in the presence of 2 μM G-actin (10% pyrene-labelled), 50 nM Arp2/3, 100 nM VCA, 5 μM Δmod, 5 μM V1ab4 and 3 μM VASP, in conditions that allow nucleation and elongation (50 mM KCl).

      Actin + Arp2/3 + VCA + delta-mod (cyan) is interesting - it looks like nucleation is delayed, but then is able to rapidly at least approach the same level as Arp2/3 + VCA. I'd love to hear some more thoughts about this.

    7. These findings shed light on the molecular mechanisms by which actin regulators synergistically control the transition of actin architecture and dynamics that accompanies the formation and maturation of AJs.

      This is a very interesting paper looking out how different actin binding proteins work together to regulate actin in specific functions!

    8. The direct observation of this reaction in TIRF microscopy revealed a progressive reorganization of the branched actin network by Δmod, V1ab4 and VASP

      I think it would go a long way to support your concluding hypotheses if you did a quantification of branching for Figure 6C because it is a little hard to make out with the density of the filaments and because it is so important for your conclusions.

    9. The fact that VASP and α-catenin/Δmod, which are not known to interact directly, stimulated actin assembly in a synergistic manner was not expected, but suggests that these two ABPs cooperate when combined in the same protein complex.

      It would be interesting to look at direct binding between these proteins, especially because they are mutants that might not behave quite as expected.

    1. most of the cortex-bearing GUVs were frozen in highly irregular shapes, showing sharp corners (pink arrows in Fig. 2A), bleb-like protrusions (yellow arrows), long and thin protrusions (cyan arrows), or highly anisotropic shapes (yellow asterisk).

      How often did you see these different morphologies? I'm curious if some are more common than others.

    2. time-lapse imaging revealed that GUV shapes often remained unchanged over many minutes

      Interesting.. I'd expect these structures to be really dynamic. Is the turnover of actin at the membrane decreased in these deflated GUVs?

    3. No protrusions occurred when actin polymerized in the GUV lumen, showing that Arp2/3-driven actin polymerization at the membrane drives protrusion formation (Fig. S7 B).

      Did you do any experiments where you polymerized actin filaments with the Arp2/3 complex, but with non-membrane anchored VCAs?

    4. Introduction

      This is a really interesting paper with a really cool technique, some beautiful images, and a ton of data that tells us a lot about the mechanics of cell protrusions. Additionally, their GUVs with minimal actin cortices could be a super useful tool for better understanding what different proteins and combinations of proteins are doing at the cortex.

    5. To selectively restrict actin nucleation to the membrane as in cells (26), we used a 10xHis-tagged VCA construct that binds to nickel-chelating lipids in the membrane.

      Really clever way to drive formation of an actin cortex at the membrane of the GUVs. But obviously VCAs aren't attached to the membrane like this in biological systems, so are there biological consequences that might affect some of this data? I think it would be interesting to hear a little bit about this in the discussion maybe?

    6. fragmented the actin cortex by laser ablatio

      I was still kind of questioning if the GUV misshaping was really due to the actin vs just having extra membrane around (even though you had the bare GUVs being more spherical), but this experiment and the CytoD experiment are really convincing. Although I wonder if you could include a quantification of roundness or a similar parameter pre and post ablation?

    7. Importantly, the width of the bleached region did not change significantly over time (Fig. S2)

      In figure 1D, it looks like the width of the bleached region didn't change, but it looks like the overall intensity of the signal around the whole GUV deceases - do you think this is from cycling through depolymerization, then monomeric actin, then repolymerizing at the bleached spot?

    8. This indicates that the fluorescence recovery was dominated by exchange of actin monomers or filaments with the GUV lumen via turnover, rather than by lateral diffusion of actin along the membrane.

      I think this FRAP experiment is really cool, and definitely important to show that the actin at the cortex turns over. Also, really cool that the turnover is close to that of living cells even without debranching, severing, disassembling proteins! Can you distinguish between filamentous actin and monomeric actin with your labelling technique? (It might be worth mentioning how you're labelling the actin here.) I'm curious what the ratio of G-actin to F-actin looks like and how this might affect turnover. You have a really great paragraph about this in discussion, but might be useful to mention briefly here.

    1. β1-integrin

      The integrin localization looks weird compared to the control too (at least in this image), do you think hat loss of Arf6 is affecting trafficking or polarity or something?

    2. To confirm that Arf6 promoted actin polymerization, we compared the amounts of globular (G), or monomeric, actin to F-actin between groups by differential centrifugation.

      Could we get a little more information about this experiment? Is it in vitro? Is it just actin from lysate? What is the buffer composition? Do you have some sort of control to show that you started with the same amount of actin in each case?

    3. This data suggests that having the ability to polymerize branched actin is necessary for protein internalization from the plasma membrane

      Cool! But this isn't true for all proteins correct? For example, it looks like VEGFR2 doesn't require the Arp2/3 complex, which is interesting, especially because Arf6 does seem to be required. Any hypotheses about this?

    4. This finding suggests that Arf6 is preferentially recruited to sites of active actin polymerization.

      Couldn't there still be active actin polymerization by formins and the like in other parts of the cell? I think you could add that the active actin polymerization is Arp2/3 complex-mediated.

    5. actin protein mCherry-Arp2

      Is this the actin-related protein Arp2 that is a part of the Arp2/3 complex? I think this is an important distinction that you might take advantage of and discuss a little bit more here.

    6. Loss of Arf6 significantly increased the amount of clathrin in sprouts as compared with controls

      Does loss of Arf6 cause differences in Arp2/3 complex recruitment to clathrin sites?

    7. Pitstop

      Could be related to off-target effects of PitStop2

    8. thinner network of filaments with an abundance of small actin accumulations leading to a generally disorganized appearance in the actin architecture compared with controls

      This is really interesting! I'd love to know more about the mechanism behind this phenotype.

    9. (CK-666)

      I think DMSO is generally a fine control, but you might consider CK-689 (the inactive version of CK-666) just because some of these are so close.

    10. Figure

      Beautiful images throughout the paper!

    11. Western blot of membrane isolations treated with scramble (Scram) or Arf6 siRNA (si)

      Is there some sort of control you could include here to show that you loaded the same amount of total protein? Maybe a coomassie dye or something?

    12. Acute inhibition of Arp2/3 significantly reduced the colocalization of Arf6 with clathrin

      This is interesting. I mentioned this before, but I'm curious about the opposite experiment. If you lose Arf6 function, does the Arp2/3 complex still colocalize with clathrin? This could help iron out the mechanism of Arf6 in this situation.

    13. Loss of Arf6 distorted both apicobasal polarity and reduced the total cellular filamentous actin content, and this may be the primary driver underlying gross dysmorphogenesis during angiogenic sprouting in its absence.

      Really cool work!

  17. Mar 2023
    1. Loss of Arf6 distorted both apicobasal polarity and reduced the total cellular filamentous actin content, and this may be the primary driver underlying gross dysmorphogenesis during angiogenic sprouting in its absence.

      Really cool work!

    2. Acute inhibition of Arp2/3 significantly reduced the colocalization of Arf6 with clathrin

      This is interesting. I mentioned this before, but I'm curious about the opposite experiment. If you lose Arf6 function, does the Arp2/3 complex still colocalize with clathrin? This could help iron out the mechanism of Arf6 in this situation.

    3. (CK-666)

      I think DMSO is generally a fine control, but you might consider CK-689 (the inactive version of CK-666) just because some of these are so close.

    4. Western blot of membrane isolations treated with scramble (Scram) or Arf6 siRNA (si)

      Is there some sort of control you could include here to show that you loaded the same amount of total protein? Maybe a coomassie dye or something?

    5. Figure

      Beautiful images throughout the paper!

    6. Pitstop

      Could be related to off-target effects of PitStop2

    7. This data suggests that having the ability to polymerize branched actin is necessary for protein internalization from the plasma membrane

      Cool! But this isn't true for all proteins correct? For example, it looks like VEGFR2 doesn't require the Arp2/3 complex, which is interesting, especially because Arf6 does seem to be required. Any hypotheses about this?

    8. To confirm that Arf6 promoted actin polymerization, we compared the amounts of globular (G), or monomeric, actin to F-actin between groups by differential centrifugation.

      Could we get a little more information about this experiment? Is it in vitro? Is it just actin from lysate? What is the buffer composition? Do you have some sort of control to show that you started with the same amount of actin in each case?

    9. thinner network of filaments with an abundance of small actin accumulations leading to a generally disorganized appearance in the actin architecture compared with controls

      This is really interesting! I'd love to know more about the mechanism behind this phenotype.

    10. β1-integrin

      The integrin localization looks weird compared to the control too (at least in this image), do you think hat loss of Arf6 is affecting trafficking or polarity or something?