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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Cell Growth and Division
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2024.1406940

Spatiotemporal regulation of MELK during mitosis

Provisionally accepted
Sreemita Majumdar Sreemita Majumdar Song-Tao Liu Song-Tao Liu *
  • Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Maternal Embryonic Leucine Zipper Kinase (MELK) has been studied intensively in recent years due to its overexpression in multiple cancers. However, the cell biology of MELK remains less characterized despite its well-documented association with mitosis. Here we report a distinctive pattern of human MELK that translocates from the cytoplasm to cell cortex within 3 minutes of anaphase onset. The cortex association lasts about 30 minutes till telophase. The spatiotemporal specific localization of MELK depends on the interaction between its Threonine-Proline (TP) rich domain and kinase associated 1 (KA1) domain, which is regulated by CDK1 kinase and PP4 protein phosphatase. KA1 domains are known to regulate kinase activities through various intramolecular interactions. Our results revealed a new role for KA1 domain to control subcellular localization of a protein kinase.

    Keywords: MELK, KA1 domain, Cell cortex, Cdk1, Anaphase

    Received: 25 Mar 2024; Accepted: 30 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Majumdar and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Song-Tao Liu, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toledo, Toledo, 43606, Ohio, United States

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