p107 Protein complexes in 3T3L1 preadipocyte differentiation

CHED 966

Grant Jackson1, Sarah Hart1, Remy Ngwanyam1, and Timothy E. Hayes, hayest@obu.edu2. (1) Department of Biology, Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, AR 71998-0001, (2) Department of Chemistry, Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, AR 71998-0001
Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Understanding the mechanisms of adipocyte differentiation could be used to address obesity. p107 and p130 are members of the Retinoblastoma family, which control the cell cycle, differentiation and apoptosis in many cell types, and interact with a multitude of cellular proteins that regulate gene expression. The goal of this study is to discover which proteins form complexes with p107 during the first day of 3T3L1 differentiation. A list of promising candidates was developed based on microarray data from proteins known to interact with retinoblastoma family members. We examined the time course of protein expression and subcellular distribution of a number of these. Several have been tested for association with p107 by coimmunoprecipitation. E2F4 associates with both p107 and p130 while E2F3, E2F5, C/EBPβ and MCM7 do not. This work was supported by NIH/NCRR/BRIN Grant P20RR-16460.