Hierarchical recruitment of ribosomal proteins and assembly factors remodels nucleolar pre-60S ribosomes.

Ribosome biogenesis involves numerous preribosomal RNA (pre-rRNA) processing events to remove internal and external transcribed spacer sequences, ultimately yielding three mature rRNAs. Removal of the internal transcribed spacer 2 spacer RNA is the final step in large subunit pre-rRNA processing and begins with endonucleolytic cleavage at the C2 site of 27SB pre-rRNA. C2 cleavage requires the hierarchical recruitment of 11 ribosomal proteins and 14 ribosome assembly factors. However, the function of these proteins in C2 cleavage remained unclear. In this study, we have performed a detailed analysis of the effects of depleting proteins required for C2 cleavage and interpreted these results using cryo-electron microscopy structures of assembling 60S subunits. This work revealed that these proteins are required for remodeling of several neighborhoods, including two major functional centers of the 60S subunit, suggesting that these remodeling events form a checkpoint leading to C2 cleavage. Interestingly, when C2 cleavage is directly blocked by depleting or inactivating the C2 endonuclease, assembly progresses through all other subsequent steps.

Diverse roles of assembly factors revealed by structures of late nuclear pre-60S ribosomes.

Ribosome biogenesis is a highly complex process in eukaryotes, involving temporally and spatially regulated ribosomal protein (r-protein) binding and ribosomal RNA remodelling events in the nucleolus, nucleoplasm and cytoplasm. Hundreds of assembly factors, organized into sequential functional groups, facilitate and guide the maturation process into productive assembly branches in and across different cellular compartments. However, the precise mechanisms by which these assembly factors function are largely unknown. Here we use cryo-electron microscopy to characterize the structures of yeast nucleoplasmic pre-60S particles affinity-purified using the epitope-tagged assembly factor Nog2. Our data pinpoint the locations and determine the structures of over 20 assembly factors, which are enriched in two areas: an arc region extending from the central protuberance to the polypeptide tunnel exit, and the domain including the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) that separates 5.8S and 25S ribosomal RNAs. In particular, two regulatory GTPases, Nog2 and Nog1, act as hub proteins to interact with multiple, distant assembly factors and functional ribosomal RNA elements, manifesting their critical roles in structural remodelling checkpoints and nuclear export. Moreover, our snapshots of compositionally and structurally different pre-60S intermediates provide essential mechanistic details for three major remodelling events before nuclear export: rotation of the 5S ribonucleoprotein, construction of the active centre and ITS2 removal. The rich structural information in our structures provides a framework to dissect molecular roles of diverse assembly factors in eukaryotic ribosome assembly.