On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins (hnRNPs) are essential RNA-binding proteins involved in regulating nucleic acid metabolism. Among them, hnRNP K stands out for its versatility. While the pathological redistribution of hnRNP K to the cytoplasm has been linked to various malignancies, its role in neurodegenerative diseases has remained largely unexplored. We unveiled hnRNP K mislocalisation in pyramidal neurons of the frontal cortex as a novel neuropathological hallmark associated with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and ageing. Notably, this mislocalisation is mutually exclusive with TDP-43 and tau inclusions and does not colocalise with mitochondrial, autophagosomal, or stress granule markers. Furthermore, we demonstrate that silencing hnRNP K in neuronal cells leads to significant transcriptomic alterations, including the induction novel cryptic exon events. These findings were validated in both hnRNP K knockdown models and FTLD brain tissues with hnRNP K nuclear depletion. Our results provide compelling evidence that hnRNP K mislocalisation contributes to diseas by driving widespread splicing changes, offering new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying these devastating disease.