Leonard Rome’s lab discovered an odd, abundant component of cells in the 1980s—and he’s still trying to figure out what it does. Vaults, as they are called, are the most massive particles made naturally by human cells and among the most abundant. Most of our cells have roughly 10,000 of the structures, with the number rising to perhaps 100,000 in certain immune cells. Many other animals make them, too. Their abundance—and the resources cells must pour into making them—suggests vaults have some essential function. But despite decades of work by Rome and other “vaulters,” their purpose is unknown. Over the decades various hypotheses have been proposed, including that vaults help ferry things around inside cells or clear toxins. And one by one, promising ideas were dismissed or lost momentum as supporting evidence failed to materialize. Initially enthusiastic about the discovery, NIH lost interest in funding basic research on vaults as the years wore on without answers. Yet Rome’s fascination with vaults hasn’t faded, even as other researchers moved on. And now, with help from other funders and labs, he has turned from basic research on vaults to studies of how they might be exploited in medicine and other fields, as nanoscale vessels for delivering therapies and more. Read more: https://scim.ag/7xm
Vaults are large ribonucleoprotein particles. About 3 times the size of a ribosome The only phenotype seen in the Dictyostelium double knockout was growth retardation under nutritional stress.[16] If vaults are involved in essential cellular functions, it seems likely that redundant systems exist that can ameliorate their loss. Observations made by the bioinformatic analyses 1- function is not yet fully understood= because it does only register all cytoplasmic activities [a hard drive] 2-large ribonucleoprotein particles = using the computer analogy=the hard drive is the biggest piece of hardware beside the power generator [mitochondria] 3-The only phenotype seen in the Dictyostelium double knockout was growth retardation = Without this storage, the program might malfunction or lose progress. Conclusion vaults a some kind of register where all cytoplasmic activity is recorded maybe for future use or fast protein manufacturing Now , In two weeks we will hear and read that some smart and dedicated microbiologist has discovered that vault cytoplasmic ribonucleoprotein function is similar to a cellular database or register or secondary memory storage
Wild stuff. {The three vault proteins (MVP, VPARP, and TEP1) have each been knocked out individually and in combination (VPARP and TEP1) in mice.[12][13][14] All of the knockout mice are viable and no major phenotypic alterations have been observed. Dictyostelium encode three different MVPs, two of which have been knocked out singly and in combination.[15] The only phenotype seen in the Dictyosteliumdouble knockout was growth retardation under nutritional stress.[16] If vaults are involved in essential cellular functions, it seems likely that redundant systems exist that can ameliorate their loss.} — Wikipedia on Vault (organelle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_(organelle)
Has anyone measured vault abundance/levels in different diseases compared to healthy/normal human? If so were there any differences?
A fawning article with a misleading title about an investigator who has an absolute lack of character that is rooted in scientific ethics........ And no, without understanding what happens to the vault in the context of the intrinsic biology of highly heterogeneous cancer cells, it is very unlikely to help cancer patients.
Hope and pray for the best.
Biomedical Engineering PhD candidate at WUSTL, Foresight Fellow
2dMy preprint on using vaults to shield AAVs from preformed antibodies is described in this article! If anyone is interested, I'm happy to answer questions. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.29.569229v4