Azzah Momenh, Agata Steenackers, Ilhan Akan and John A Hanover
National Institutes of Health,USA
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Cell Sci Ther
O-GlcNAcylation is a dynamic post-translational modification (PTM) of thousands of nuclear, cytoplasmic and mitochondrial proteins. This PTM targets serine or threonine residues of proteins, resulting in crosstalk with phosphorylation. The protein phosphorylation is controlled by many different kinases and phosphatases, whereas only two enzymes regulate O-GlcNAcylation. The addition of N-Acetylglucosamine onto target proteins is controlled by O-GlcNActransferase(OGT), while removal of this molecule is catalyzed by O-GlcNAcase(OGA). OGT uses UDP-GlcNAc(uridine diphosphate- N-acetylglucosamine) as a donor, which is the product of the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway. Since, nutrient derivative molecules, including glucose, glutamine, acetyl CoA and uridine diphosphate are all used to synthesize UDP-GlcNAc, O-GlcNAc cycling is susceptible to cellular nutrient levels. Therefore, O-GlcNAc is suggested to connect the nutrient status to cellular machineries. Moreover, O-GlcNAc cycling is involved in many fundamental functions, including transcription, translation, cell signaling, and protein trafficking. Deregulation of O-GlcNAcylation dynamics is involved in the etiology of diverse pathologies, such as type 2-diabetes, Alzheimer and cancers.
Azzah Momenh from Saudi Arabia-Dammam she is currently pursuing her masters education in The Catholic University of America. Bachelors and Diploma in University of Damman, Saudi Arabia.Her research and Laboratory experience include:She worked as a research assistant under the direct of John S.Choy at The Catholicuniversity of America. She was a member of John Hanover, Ph.D’s. research team in the same university. She served as an intern in the laboratory of John A. Hanover, Ph.D., Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and worked with Agata Steenackers, Ph.D., in the project entitled “Protein Stabilization and Purification by Targeted domain swapping.”
E-mail: momenh@cua.edu
