OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, 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.