Ubiquitination in Health and Disease

Dear Colleagues,

Ubiquitination is a post-translational modification process that controls the degradation, signaling and activity of many, if not all, cellular proteins. Ubiquitination needs to be finely tuned and is catalyzed and controlled by several players: ubiquitin; the E1 ubiquitin activating enzyme, the E2 ubiquitin conjugating enzymes, the E3 ubiquitin ligases, which compose the ubiquitination cascade; the deubiquitination enzymes that reverse the modification; and the proteins that recognize the ubiquitination code and translate the signal. Substrates can be modified with a single ubiquitin peptide, in one or multiple sites, or with a poly-ubiquitin chain. The topology of the built ubiquitin chain determines the fate of the targeted substrate. In cells also free poly-ubiquitin chains, which are not conjugated to any target protein, can be synthesized. In recent years, considerable progress has been made in the understanding the molecular action of ubiquitin in signaling pathways and how alterations in the ubiquitin system lead to the development of several human diseases from cancer, metabolic syndromes, neurodegenerative diseases, inflammatory disorders, and rare genetic disorders.

In this Special Issue of Cells, we invite your contributions, either in the form of original research articles or reviews addressing the expanding field of mechanistic and functional insights into the physiological and pathological role of specific ubiquitination pathways and components.

Prof. Germana Meroni
Dr. Giuseppe Merla
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cells is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.