Functions
PARP is found in the cell’s nucleus. The main role is to detect and signal single-strand DNA breaks (SSB) to the enzymatic machinery involved in the SSB repair. PARP activation is an immediate cellular response to metabolic, chemical, or radiation-induced DNA SSB damage. Once PARP detects a SSB, it binds to the DNA, and, after a structural change, begins the synthesis of a poly (ADP-ribose) chain (PAR) as a signal for the other DNA-repairing enzymes such as DNA ligase III (LigIII), DNA polymerase beta (polβ), and scaffolding proteins such as X-ray cross-complementing gene 1 (XRCC1). After repairing, the PAR chains are degraded via Poly(ADP-ribose) glycohydrolase (PARG).
It is interesting to note that NAD+ is required as substrate for generating ADP-ribose monomers. The overactivation of PARP may deplete the stores of cellular NAD+ and induce a progressive ATP depletion, since glucose oxidation is inhibited, and necrotic cell death. In this regard, PARP is inactivated by caspase-3 cleavage (in a specific domain of the enzyme) during programmed cell death.
PARP enzymes are essential in a number of cellular functions, including expression of inflammatory genes: PARP1 is required for the induction of ICAM-1 gene expression by smooth muscle cells, in response to TNF.
Read more about this topic: Poly ADP Ribose Polymerase
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Mark the babe
Not long accustomed to this breathing world;
One that hath barely learned to shape a smile,
Though yet irrational of soul, to grasp
With tiny finger—to let fall a tear;
And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves,
To stretch his limbs, bemocking, as might seem,
The outward functions of intelligent man.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)