ERH proteins: connecting RNA processing to tumorigenesis?

Abstract

With the development of-omics approaches, the scientific community is now submerged by a wealth of information that can be used to analyze various parameters: the degree of protein sequence conservation, protein 3D structures as well as RNA and protein expression levels in various benign and tumor tissues, during organism development or upon exposure to chemicals such as endocrine disrupters. However, if such information can be used to identify genes with potentially important biological function, additional studies are needed to deeply characterize their cellular function in model organisms. Here, we discuss the case of such a gene: ERH, encoding a highly conserved homodimeric protein found in unicellular eukaryotes, plants and metazoan, of yet unknown biological function, which might be linked to mRNA metabolism and that is emerging as important for cell migration and metastasis.

Proteomics separates adult-type diffuse high-grade gliomas in metabolic subgroups independent of 1p/19q codeletion and across IDH mutational status

“… 63 LUM, lumican OG lung cancer metastasis Hsiao et al. 64 ERH, enhancer of rudimentary homolog OG breast, ovarian, liver, and bladder urothelial cancer splicing, cell cycle, DNA replication and repair, EMT and invasion Graille and Rougemaille 65 ; Pang et al. 66 ; Zhang et al.…”

Molecular basis for the recognition of CIZ1 by ERH

“…ERH is a small protein conserved from yeast to mammals [7], and all of its orthologs adopt a butterfly-like dimeric structure despite low-sequence identity [8][9][10][11]. In addition, high expression of ERH is associated with several types of cancers [7,12,13]. However, the evolutionarily conserved role of ERH remains elusive since ERH-binding ligands are not conserved in eukaryotes.…”

Systematic identification of factors involved in the silencing of germline genes in mouse embryonic stem cells

“…The identification of ERH in our study highlights a conservation of its role as a repressor of meiotic and germline genes from S. pombe to higher eukaryotes. The Erh gene encodes a small protein highly conserved in metazoans with enigmatic functions ( 84 ). ERH orthologs can be tracked to fission yeasts including S. pombe and S. japonicus but not S. cerevisea which lacks H3K9 methylation.…”