RESUMEN
The nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) pathway clears eukaryotic cells of mRNAs containing premature termination codons (PTCs) or normal stop codons located in specific contexts. It therefore plays an important role in gene expression regulation. The precise molecular mechanism of the NMD pathway has long been considered to differ substantially from yeast to metazoa, despite the involvement of universally conserved factors such as the central ATP-dependent RNA-helicase Upf1. Here, we describe the crystal structure of the yeast Upf1 bound to its recently identified but yet uncharacterized partner Nmd4, show that Nmd4 stimulates Upf1 ATPase activity and that this interaction contributes to the elimination of NMD substrates. We also demonstrate that a region of Nmd4 critical for the interaction with Upf1 in yeast is conserved in the metazoan SMG6 protein, another major NMD factor. We show that this conserved region is involved in the interaction of SMG6 with UPF1 and that mutations in this region affect the levels of endogenous human NMD substrates. Our results support the universal conservation of the NMD mechanism in eukaryotes.
Asunto(s)
Degradación de ARNm Mediada por Codón sin Sentido , ARN Helicasas , Proteínas de Saccharomyces cerevisiae , Saccharomyces cerevisiae , Proteínas de Saccharomyces cerevisiae/metabolismo , Proteínas de Saccharomyces cerevisiae/genética , ARN Helicasas/metabolismo , ARN Helicasas/genética , Humanos , Saccharomyces cerevisiae/metabolismo , Saccharomyces cerevisiae/genética , ARN Mensajero/metabolismo , ARN Mensajero/genética , Transactivadores/metabolismo , Transactivadores/genética , Adenosina Trifosfatasas/metabolismo , Adenosina Trifosfatasas/genética , Unión Proteica , Cristalografía por Rayos X , EndorribonucleasasRESUMEN
A figure in the article by Barbarin-Bocahu & Graille [(2022), Acta Cryst. D78, 517-531] is corrected.
RESUMEN
The breakthrough recently made in protein structure prediction by deep-learning programs such as AlphaFold and RoseTTAFold will certainly revolutionize biology over the coming decades. The scientific community is only starting to appreciate the various applications, benefits and limitations of these protein models. Yet, after the first thrills due to this revolution, it is important to evaluate the impact of the proposed models and their overall quality to avoid the misinterpretation or overinterpretation of these models by biologists. One of the first applications of these models is in solving the `phase problem' encountered in X-ray crystallography in calculating electron-density maps from diffraction data. Indeed, the most frequently used technique to derive electron-density maps is molecular replacement. As this technique relies on knowledge of the structure of a protein that shares strong structural similarity with the studied protein, the availability of high-accuracy models is then definitely critical for successful structure solution. After the collection of a 2.45â Å resolution data set, we struggled for two years in trying to solve the crystal structure of a protein involved in the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay pathway, an mRNA quality-control pathway dedicated to the elimination of eukaryotic mRNAs harboring premature stop codons. We used different methods (isomorphous replacement, anomalous diffraction and molecular replacement) to determine this structure, but all failed until we straightforwardly succeeded thanks to both AlphaFold and RoseTTAFold models. Here, we describe how these new models helped us to solve this structure and conclude that in our case the AlphaFold model largely outcompetes the other models. We also discuss the importance of search-model generation for successful molecular replacement.