Epigenetic editor silences prion proteins in brains of mice
CHECK THIS OUTTTT this is an article about a really neat paper by neumann et al. that was published in science on the 28th of june that looks at epigentic editing that may help in treating prion disease and may have applications in other neurodegenerative diseases which cause protein accumulation like huntingtons, alzheimers, or parkinsons.
they created a fusion protein named CHARM. charm stands for Coupled Histone Tail for Autoinhibition Release of Methyltransferase. broken down, this name refers to:
the coupled histone tail: histones are proteins that help package DNA in cells. the "tail" of a histone is a part that can interact with other molecules. tn CHARM, this histone tail is used to help guide the tool to the right spot on the DNA, in this case the area which codes for PRP (prion proteins).
an autoinhibition release: this means that CHARM can remove a natural "brake" or stopper that normally keeps the DNA-modifying enzyme (methyltransferase) from working.
methyltransferase: this is the enzyme that adds the methyl groups (chemical tags) to the DNA, which the cell to ignore that part of the DNA and not produce the prion protein. basically a little DNI marker on the DNA.
rather than using CRISPR which is too large to do what they want, they used zinc finger proteins which are much smaller and are targeted to the prion protein. when the zinc finger protein attaches to the prion gene, the methyltransferase then recruits methyl groups to the DNA sequence telling the cell to ignore it!
sonia vallabh, one of the authors of the paper gave a ted talk earlier this month about prion disease. she was diagnosed with familial creutzfeldt-jakob disease and has been working on treatments and a cure since her diagnosis.
