Research Paper Volume 11, Issue 11 pp 3624—3638

Figure 6. Impact of carbamylation on proteasome proteolytic activities and on the ubiquitination process. (a) Evaluation of proteasome proteolytic activity after incubation of cells with urea or cyanate: confluent fibroblasts were incubated for 4 weeks at 37°C with DMEM + 0.5% (v/v) FBS without (control conditions, open bars) or with 20 mmol/L urea (grey bars) or 0.5 mmol/L cyanate (black bars). Chymotrypsin-like, caspase-like and trypsin-like activities have been measured in cell extracts using the corresponding Proteasome-Glo™ assays. The data are presented as means ± SEM (n=6) and compared using the Mann-Whitney U test (ns: non significant, **: p<0.01). (b) Ubiquitination level of intracellular proteins after incubation of cells with urea or cyanate: confluent fibroblasts were incubated for 4 weeks at 37°C with DMEM + 0.5% (v/v) FBS without (control conditions) or with 20 mmol/L urea or 0.5 mmol/L cyanate, and cell extracts were prepared and submitted to western-blot analysis using an anti-ubiquitin antibody. (c) Anti-HCit and anti-ubiquitin immunolabellings were performed using fibroblasts previously seeded (10,000 cells/well) in chambered coverglass system and incubated for 2 days with DMEM containing 0.5% (v/v) FBS and 5 mmol/L cyanate. At the end of incubation, cells were fixed with 4% (v/v) paraformaldehyde and permeabilized with 0.25% (v/v) Triton X-100 before immunolabelling of proteins using both anti-HCit and anti-ubiquitin antibodies. Colocalization points between HCit and ubiquitin labelling were identified using ImageJ software.