ChemRxiv Posts Its 20,000th Preprint

Earlier this month, ChemRxiv posted its 20,000th preprint to ChemRxiv.org! The entire ChemRxiv team would like to thank our authors for their contributions over the last six years. These preprints have been viewed and downloaded more than 47 million times, an indication of their benefit to the chemistry community and beyond. We are deeply grateful for your support and appreciate your willingness to share your research with the world via ChemRxiv!

The 20,000th preprint posted to ChemRxiv was “Hsp40 Affinity Profiling Reveals Protein Destabilization Profiles Following Cellular Manganese and Vanadate Exposure” authored by researchers from the University of California, Riverside: Guy M. Quanruda, Macon Abernathy, Ziqi Lyua, Samantha C. Ying, and Joseph C. Genereux.

We sat down with Dr. Joseph C. Genereux, the PI of the group that posted this research, to find out more about their recent preprint:

Why did you decide to submit this recent preprint?

It gets the results out there right away, which is important as this work demonstrates potential threats associated with manganese overexposure that we want the community to be aware of.

Did you have any prior experience with preprints?

I preprint every paper from my group. For the more biological work I use BioRxiv, but for this work ChemRxiv was a better fit for the intended audience.

Can you give us a brief summary of the research shared in your preprint?

We used Hsp40 Affinity Profiling, a method to profile proteome stability, to determine protein targets of manganese and vanadate in cells. We found that manganese exposure destabilizes NF-kB repressing factor, establishing a mechanism for the known induction of NF-kB-mediated inflammation following manganese exposure. Similarly, vanadate stabilizes the SRSF family of spliceosome proteins, which could explain why vanadium can therapeutically modulate splicing of SMN2, an important target in spinal muscular atrophy.

Are you planning to submit your research to a journal?

This work has been submitted to an ACS journal.

What feedback have you received about your preprint (or past preprints)?

While I haven't received unsolicited feedback on prior preprints, I know that they get read. More importantly, I read (and cite!) a lot of preprints myself, so it is important for me to similarly share my work with our community.

What other research are you and your group doing?

My laboratory develops analytical tools to characterize protein homeostasis. In addition to developing and applying Hsp40 Affinity Profiling, we have been using proximity labeling to characterize the causes, mechanisms and consequences of stress-induced protein mistargeting. Mistargeted protein is a major threat for the cell due to the risk of proteotoxicity, and might contribute to various disease states. By better characterizing which proteins mistarget, how, and what happens next, it could give us a better understanding of disease etiology.