Yan Liu1 • Xin Tian1 • Pingyang Ke1 • Juan Gu1 • Yuanlin Ma1 • Yi Guo1 • Xin Xu1 • Yuanyuan Chen1 • Min Yang1 • Xuefeng Wang1 • Fei Xiao1

1 Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing Key Laboratory of Neurology, Chongqing 400016, China

 

Abstract

    Epilepsy is a common and severe brain disease affecting [65 million people worldwide. Recent studies have shown that kinesin superfamily motor protein 17 (KIF17) is expressed in neurons and is involved in regulating the dendrite-targeted transport of N-methyl-Daspartate receptor subtype 2B (NR2B). However, the effect of KIF17 on epileptic seizures remains to be explored. We found that KIF17 was mainly expressed in neurons and that its expression was increased in epileptic brain tissue. In the kainic acid (KA)-induced epilepsy mouse model, KIF17 overexpression increased the severity of epileptic activity, whereas KIF17 knockdown had the opposite effect. In electrophysiological tests, KIF17 regulated excitatory synaptic transmission, potentially due to KIF17-mediated NR2B membrane expression. In addition, this report provides the first demonstration that KIF17 is modified by SUMOylation (SUMO, small ubiquitin-like modifier), which plays a vital role in the stabilization and maintenance of KIF17 in epilepsy

 

 

Keywords

    Epilepsy; KIF17; NR2B; SUMOylation

 

 

[SpringerLink]