Stable over expression of the SPOP-substrate ZMYND11 in VCaP cells

SPOP is known to bind to serine/theronine-rich degrons on substrate proteins. We identified two degron sequences within the PWWP and MYND domain of ZMYND11, a novel SPOP substrate, and investigated whether ZMYND11 may contribute to the transcriptional output of mutant SPOP in VCaP cancer cells. Hence, we performed over-expression of degron-deficient ZMYND11 and degron-deficient ZMYND11 with W294A mutation in VCaP cells. While WT ZMYND11 constructs can be robustly over-expressed at the mRNA level, only the degron-deficient variants yielded a robost increase in ZMYND11 protein expression. Degron mutant-induced transcriptional perturbations partially mimicked SPOP mutant-induced gene expression changes, suggesting that ZMYND11 is sufficient to recapitulate certain features of mutant SPOP.