PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Leandro Royer
AU  - Josiah J. Herzog
AU  - Katelyn Kenny
AU  - Boriana Tzvetkova
AU  - Jesse C. Cochrane
AU  - Michael T. Marr II
AU  - Suzanne Paradis
TI  - The Ras-like GTPase Rem2 is a potent endogenous inhibitor of calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase II activity
AID  - 10.1101/148981
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 148981
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/12/148981.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/12/148981.full
AB  - CaMKII is a well-characterized, abundant protein kinase that regulates a diverse set of functions in a tissue specific manner. For example, in heart muscle, CaMKII regulates Ca2+ homeostasis while in neurons CaMKII regulates activity-dependent dendritic remodeling and Long Term Potentiation (LTP), a biological correlate of learning and memory. Previously, we identified the noncanonical GTPase Rem2 as a critical regulator of dendrite branching and synapse formation in the vertebrate nervous system. Here, we report that Rem2 directly interacts with CaMKII and potently inhibits the activity of the intact holoenzyme, a previously undescribed function for the Rem2 protein. To date, only one other endogenous inhibitor of CaMKII has been described: CaMKIIN, which blocks CaMKII activity through binding to the catalytic domain. Our data suggest that Rem2 inhibits CaMKII through a novel mechanism, as inhibition requires the presence of the association domain of CaMKII. Our biochemical finding that Rem2 is a direct, endogenous inhibitor of CaMKII activity, coupled with known functions of Rem2 in neurons, provides a framework which will enable future experiments probing the physiological role of CaMKII inhibition in a cellular context.