What the hell is up with vaults?

What the hell is up with vaults?

>found in almost all complex organisms
>tens of thousands per cell
>associated with drug resistance, cell movement, inter and extracellular transport, immunity, signalling

but

>knock out all the proteins to make them in mice, and they're fine
>happens to not be in fruit flies, common yeast, C. elegans and thale cress, four of the organisms we use most extensively in genetic research
>knockdown doesn't actually seem to reduce drug resistance

Other urls found in this thread:

the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40599/title/A-Vaulted-Mystery/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_(anatomy)#Functions
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

This is the first time I've ever heard of these things, but I know that in some cases gene knock outs are compensated by overexpression of other genes that have similar functions. Somebody should do some knock down studies on these things and see what happens.
Also, I would like to see what other types of proteins and stuff these things interact with. Any good articles you can point me to?

Just this one: the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40599/title/A-Vaulted-Mystery/

I only found out about them today too, and I'm surprised I've never seen them mentioned in any writing about cell structures before.

I see. Makes you wonder about what else is out there.

I'm going to have to read about these. I'm a senior bio major and I've never heard of them in any of my classes.

Might be incorporated viral RNA? Viri use shells to protect their RNA, correct? Could somewhere in the evolutionary chain a viral shell expressing RNA string be incorporated into the DNA? If so, the part is probably useless, but also harmless.

Yeah, it's weird that they don't seem to get mentioned just because we don't know exactly what they do yet. If anything that makes them way more interesting to learn about.

are there any literally useless evolutionary anomalies?

my thoughts:
if it's useless, it doesn't affect the species adversely, so it has a good possibility of remaining in the evolutionary tree

i'm obviously no biologist, and it's probably stupid, but i feel like there should be a lot more useless things like this

Sure, lots of 'em. Many species have vestigial organs or structures.

this is a good thread

Absolutely. The fact that the genes for these things are so highly conserved and just the sheer utility their structure suggests makes it hard for me to believe they don't have some use though.

Generally, if living things can't use it, they lose it
Nature is cheap
Why should it invest in making these ribonucleoproteins if they serve no function?

Well obviously vaults contain life force or something. Anything that doesn't contain vaults is just like a P-zombie or something.

Because they don't get selected against?

There's no down side to the fact that if you have non functioning ones that would cause you to be any less fit, so over time this can lead to a over all decrease, given long enough disappear.
It is not a short time span type of change it would take a long ass time for it to start going away

man i hadn't even heard about these fuckers, they're spooky
>not found in arabidopsis
ah that's why

circular RNAs, derived from modified tRNAs, are found in some species but not all. in some species, knocking them out seems to have an effect, but in others, they seem to be completely dispensable

Very possible. Especially with retroviruses, it happens quite frequently. It might also explain the high number in cells if the same sort of viral promotor is used

>There's no down side to the fact that if you have non functioning ones that would cause you to be any less fit
Except that you're expending energy making something that has no purpose

We also still have our appendix. It costs energy and can inflame.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_(anatomy)#Functions

Yup. You expend one phosphate group per nitrogen base in DNA replication and considering the article says that they are 3000 kDa in weight (!!!), that's a shit ton of energy you're using to replicate "useless" genes, never mind translating them. Then consider that these genes get proof read and corrected, which wastes more energy. This is weirdly wasteful for metabolism.

Mutations are rather frequent. Completely useless DNA gets fragmented into junk over time, regardless of selection pressure.

>if it's useless, it doesn't affect the species adversely, so it has a good possibility of remaining
It's literally the other way around you fucking re-
>i'm obviously no biologist
Oh. Well, you should still probably have heard this in high school biology I think.

So basically a retrovirus that doesn't lyse? Highly unlikely based on the fact alone that it's widespread among eukaryotes. Also, viruses wouldn't have proteins such as mammalian telomerase associated protein-1.

it's a meme. It doesn't need to have a purpose, it just needs to be easily reproducible.

Captcha is "select all bananas"

So just cause of the name I have to guess perhaps it has to do with storing specific small molecules inside of it either for export from the cell or as a long term storage until environmental factors cause a release.

It's interesting that they are found in high concentrations when dealing with exportation of dangerous substances from cells. Would it be possible that they are chaperones? Perhaps they help export mechanisms resist degradation from the dangerous chemicals. I'm gonna look up whether they are common in the liver really quick.

It's stated that these vRNA's are highly conserved.

Although vaults have been observed in many eukaryotic species, a few species do not appear to have the protein. These include:
Arabidopsis thaliana—a small flowering plant related to cabbage and mustard.
Caenorhabditis elegans—a free-living nematode that lives in soil.
Drosophila melanogaster—a two-winged insect also known as a fruit fly.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae—a species of yeast.

I find it really concerning that the four species without vault RNA are all model organisms.

Anyone know of any studies on metabolic production of vRNA's?

It's probably just be a coincidence, but I wonder if the preference for model organisms with short reproduction cycles might be relevant. If it were something vestigial, there's a chance we could be investigating it on the cusp of it being more commonly deselected.

You might have something there, it could be important for long term cellular mechanisms. Perhaps it is a stop gap against cellular degeneration? Kind of like a proto-oncogene maybe? I wish there were ribosomal profiling studies about this stuff, it'd help give time lines for production beyond chemotherapy and antibiotics.

It has been highly selected for and is important for some reason with regards to handling dangerous cellular material. It's also associated with the nuclear pore complex so it definitely has to do with transport of some kind. Especially so since they are being used for drug delivery by UCLA. I doubt it's vestigial otherwise it wouldn't be so prevalent given its metabolic cost especially in the more ruthless single celled eukaryotes.

From wikipedia "The only phenotype seen in the Dictyostelium double knockout was growth retardation under nutritional stress."
Could be something related to autophagosome formation.

The appendix is universal isn't it? Unless someone gets a mutation that would remove it there's no "No appendix" trait that can be selected for.

that makes some sense but I'm currently trying to gain access to some papers having to do with them.

Wild guess, nuclear pore association and possible assembly, association with resistance to drugs the cell does not readily recognize and it is capsid like.

Cell recognizes some foreign possibly carcinogenic compound hanging around the nuclear. None of the other highly specialized transport proteins is interfacing with said molecule. This vault acts as he intermediary to try and isolate the molecule from the rest of the cell until removed. Many antibiotic immune bacteria have to do with restoring membrane concentrations and changing the nature of the molecule through enzymatic reactions to render it inert.

I'm just a third year uni student with an introductory background in mol. bio, genetics, and physiology (I havnt even touched immunology yet) but I've just started a course in virology and I can already see striking similarities to viral capsid structure. It's a large assumption to make, but I wouldn't be surprised that at some point a virus "filled in the flaws" of our immune system. From what I've learned in my virology course thus far, it is not uncommon for viruses to defend their host against other microbes e.g. bacteria, but I've yet to hear of a capsid providing such function. Nonetheless, if this were the case, it would provide an elegant answer to why these vaults exist (in the same way that sickle-cell anemia once was a defense mechanism against malaria). What's throwing me off the most though if the presence of TEP1 which is involved in telomerase activity.

Interesting idea although I thought most viruses don't like using RNA as structural material. Perhaps its a left over from a very ancient virus mutated and transformed to the point that it is unrecognizable.

The TEP1 might explain the lack of growth under nutritional stress maybe? Grasping at straws there.

>if it's useless, it doesn't affect the species adversely,

Except it would cost energy to create, and expending energy on a useless structure IS and adverse effect.