Recently, Professor Gao Chengjiang and his team published a paper in Cell Reports (Cas 1 district,IF=9.423) entitled “The protein arginine methyltransferase PRMT1 promotes TBK1 activation through Asymmetric arginineMethylation ". Yan Zhenzhen and Wu Haifeng are the co-first authors of this paper. Professor Gao Chengjiang is the corresponding author of this paper. Shandong University is the first and only corresponding author of this paper.

By screening members of PRMT family, We found that PRMT1 (І type arginine methyltransferase) plays a positive regulatory role in antiviral immune response, and PRMT1 myeloid cell-specific knockout mice have higher mortality after viral infection. Further studies showed that PRMT1 specifically binds to TBK1 and enhances the asymmetric dimethylation level of TBK1 after viral stimulation. Mechanism studies have shown that TBK1 methylation promotes its polycondensation, which further induces TBK1 autophosphorylation and activates downstream signaling pathways. This study reveals a novel post-translational modification form of TBK1 protein, which further improves the regulatory mechanism of antiviral signaling pathway.

Paper link: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01180-3