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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 279, Issue 20, 20850-20857, May 14, 2004
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¶
From the
Department of Pharmaco-Biology, Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Bari, Via E. Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy and the
CNR Institute of Biomembranes and Bioenergetics, Via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
Received for publication, December 12, 2003 , and in revised form, February 27, 2004.
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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phosphate from ATP to a nucleoside diphosphate to yield nucleotide triphosphates. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, however, succinyl-CoA ligase produces ATP instead of GTP (4), and the mitochondrial nucleoside diphosphate kinase is localized in the intermembrane space and absent in the matrix (5). These observations imply that in S. cerevisiae GTP has to be imported into the mitochondria probably via a carrier system embedded in the inner mitochondrial membrane. Despite the importance of GTP in mitochondrial metabolism, the transport of guanine nucleotides has not been characterized in yeast mitochondria, nor has any mitochondrial protein responsible for this transport been identified. There are only two indirect observations that suggest that GTP is transported across the inner mitochondrial membrane of S. cerevisiae. First, mitochondrial protein synthesis is stimulated by the addition of external GTP (6), and second, on incubating yeast mitochondria with labeled GTP, the amount of radioactivity associated with mitochondria is time-dependent, inhibited by GDP and insensitive to carboxyatractyloside (7).
The inner membranes of mitochondria contain a family of proteins that transport various substrates and products into and out of the matrix (for a review see Ref. 8). These proteins are characterized by three tandem sequence repeats, each being approximately 100 amino acids in length and folded into two transmembrane
-helices joined by an extensive hydrophilic loop. The nuclear genome of S. cerevisiae encodes 35 members of this family. The functions of many members are unknown because the substrates transported have not yet been discovered. One of these, Ggc1p, i.e. the GTP/GDP carrier (encoded by YDL198c and previously known as Yhm1p) has been shown to be localized to mitochondria and to be a multicopy suppressor (by an unknown mechanism) of the ability of the abf2 null mutant to grow at 37 °C on glycerol (9).
Here we report the identification and functional characterization of Ggc1p. This protein has been overexpressed in Escherichia coli, reconstituted into phospholipid vesicles, and identified from its transport properties as a carrier for GTP and GDP. Ggc1p operates in yeast mitochondria with transport properties similar to those observed with the recombinant protein. In addition, ggc1
cells exhibit lower levels of GTP and increased levels of GDP in their mitochondria, are unable to grow on nonfermentable substrates, and have lost their mtDNA. The physiological role of Ggc1p in S. cerevisiae is probably to catalyze the exchange between external GTP and internal GDP to satisfy the need for GTP in the mitochondrial matrix, where this compound cannot be synthesized. This report presents the first information on the molecular properties of the mitochondrial GTP/GDP carrier and a definitive identification of its gene in S. cerevisiae.
| EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES |
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Yeast Strains, Media, and Preparation of MitochondriaBY4741 (wild-type) and ggc1
yeast strains were provided by the EUROFAN resource center EUROSCARF (Frankfurt, Germany). In the ggc1
mutant the ggc1 (YDL198c) locus of S. cerevisiae strain BY4741 (MATa; his3
1; leu2
0; met15
0; ura3
0) (10) was replaced by kanMX4. Wild-type cells and the deletion strain were grown in rich medium containing 2% bactopeptone and 1% yeast extract (YP), supplemented with either fermentable (2% glucose or 2% galactose) or nonfermentable (2% ethanol, 3% acetate, 10 mM oxaloacetate, 2% pyruvate, 2% lactate, or 3% glycerol) carbon sources. The final pH was adjusted to 4.5 or, with pyruvate or acetate, to 6.5. The mitochondria were isolated by standard procedures. The amount of Ggc1p in wild-type mitochondria was determined by quantitative immunoblotting (11).
Bacterial Expression and Purification of Ggc1pThe coding sequence of ggc1 (open reading frame YDL198c) was amplified from S. cerevisiae genomic DNA by PCR. The oligonucleotide primers were synthesized corresponding to the extremities of the coding sequence, with additional BamHI and HindIII sites. The product was cloned into the pMW7 expression vector, and the construct was transformed into E. coli DH5
cells. Transformants were selected on 2x TY plates containing ampicillin (100 µg/ml) and screened by direct colony PCR and restriction digestion of plasmids. The overproduction of Ggc1p as inclusion bodies in the cytosol of E. coli was accomplished as described before (12), except that the host cells were E. coli C0214(DE3) (13, 14). Control cultures with the empty vector were processed in parallel. Inclusion bodies were isolated, and Ggc1p was purified by centrifugation and washing steps as described previously (13, 15). The proteins were separated by SDS-PAGE in 17.5% gels and either stained with Coomassie Blue dye or transferred to nitrocellulose membranes for immunodetection with a rabbit antiserum raised against bacterially expressed Ggc1p. The N terminus was sequenced, and the yield of purified Ggc1p was estimated by laser densitometry of stained samples (11).
Reconstitution into Liposomes and Transport AssaysThe recombinant protein in sarkosyl was reconstituted into liposomes in the presence of substrates, as described before (16). External substrate was removed from proteoliposomes on Sephadex G-75 columns, pre-equilibrated with 50 mM NaCl and 10 mM PIPES-NaOH1 at pH 7.0 (buffer A) or 1 mM PIPES-NaOH at pH 7.0 in the experiments reported in Table II. Transport at 25 °C was started by adding [8-3H]GTP (Amersham Biosciences), [8,5'-3H]GDP, or [
-33P]dGTP (PerkinElmer Life Sciences) to proteoliposomes and terminated by the addition of 15 mM bathophenanthroline and 30 mM pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (the "inhibitor stop" method (16)). In controls, the inhibitors were added at the beginning together with the radioactive substrate. All of the transport measurements were carried out in the presence of 10 mM PIPES at pH 7.0 in the internal and external compartments, except in the experiments reported in Table II, where 1 mM PIPES at pH 7.0 was used. The external substrate was removed, and the radioactivity in the liposomes was measured (16). The experimental values were corrected by subtracting control values. The initial transport rate was calculated from the radioactivity taken up by proteoliposomes after 20 s (in the initial linear range of substrate uptake). For efflux measurements, proteoliposomes containing 1 mM substrate were labeled with carrier free [8-3H]GTP by carrier-mediated exchange equilibration (16). After 40 min, the external radioactivity was removed by passing the proteoliposomes through Sephadex G-75. Efflux was started by adding unlabeled external substrate or buffer A alone and terminated by adding the inhibitors indicated above.
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pH (acidic outside), nigericin (50 ng/mg phospholipid) was added to proteoliposomes in the presence of an inwardly directed potassium gradient. The membrane potential of isolated mitochondria was assessed by recording the fluorescence changes of the voltage-sensitive dye 3,3'-dipropylthiadicarbocyanine iodide DiSC (3, 5) (Molecular Probes) as previously described (18). For DNA detection, the BY4741 and the isogenic ggc1
strains were fixed with formaldehyde following growth on galactose to an A600 of 2.0. Then the DNA was stained by incubation with 1 µg/ml DAPI at 4 °C overnight. DAPI fluorescence was detected using an inverted Zeiss Axiovert 200 epifluorescence microscope equipped with a CoolSNAP HQ CCD camera (Roper Scientific, Trenton, NJ) and the Metamorph software (Universal Imaging Corporation, Downington, PA). | RESULTS |
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The substrate specificity of Ggc1p was examined in greater detail by measuring the uptake of [
-33P]dGTP into proteoliposomes that had been preloaded with various potential substrates (Fig. 2A). High rates of [
-33P]dGTP uptake into proteoliposomes were observed with internal GDP, GTP, dGDP, dGTP, IDP, and ITP. Much smaller activities were found with internal guanosine 5'-tetraphosphate and (deoxy)nucleoside di- and triphosphates of U and T. No activity was detected with internal (d)NDP and (d)NTP of A and C, with GMP and all the other (deoxy)nucleoside monophosphates tested, with NaCl and (not shown) with adenosine, adenine, NMN, FMN, thiamine pyrophosphate, NADH, NADPH, FAD, phosphate, pyrophosphate, and malate.
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-33P]dGTP/dGTP exchange (Fig. 2B). A low inhibition was found with UDP, UTP, dUDP, dUTP, TDP, and TTP, and virtually no effect was detected with (deoxy)nucleoside di- and triphosphates of A and C, GMP, the other nucleoside monophosphates and (not shown) phosphate, malate, succinate, ornithine, carnitine, oxaloacetate, sulfate, 2-oxoaminoadipate, and thiamine mono- and diphosphate.
The [8-3H]GTP/GTP exchange reaction catalyzed by reconstituted Ggc1p was inhibited strongly by pyridoxal 5'-phosphate and bathophenanthroline (inhibitors of many mitochondrial carriers), tannic acid, and bromcresol purple (inhibitors of the mitochondrial glutamate carrier) and only partially by the sulfydryl reagents mercuric chloride and mersalyl and by 1,2,3-benzenetricarboxylate (inhibitor of the mitochondrial citrate carrier) (Fig. 3). Carboxyatractyloside and bongkrekate (powerful inhibitors of the ADP/ATP carrier) had little effect at much higher concentrations than those that completely inhibit the ADP/ATP carrier. Very little inhibition was observed with p-hydroxymercuribenzoate, p-hydroxymercuribenzene sulfonate, N-ethylmaleimide, butylmalonate, phenylsuccinate, and
-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamate (inhibitors of other mitochondrial carriers).
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-33P]dGTP (1100 µM). With all three external substrates, the linear functions were obtained in double-reciprocal plots. They were independent of the internal substrate and intersected the ordinate close to a common point (not shown). For GTP, GDP, and dGTP, the transport affinities (Km) were 1.2 ± 0.1, 4.5 ± 0.7, and 15.9 ± 1.8 µM (mean values of 20, six and seven experiments, respectively). The average value of Vmax was 2.0 ± 0.4 mmol/min/g of protein. Several external substrates were competitive inhibitors of [8-3H]GTP uptake (Table I) because they increased the apparent Km without changing the Vmax (not shown). These results confirm that GTP is the highest affinity external substrate (Ki, 0.9 µM). The Ki values of all of the NTPs are lower than those of their corresponding NDPs. Furthermore, the affinity of Ggc1p for GTP and GDP is approximately 1 order of magnitude higher than for dGTP and dGDP and approximately 2 orders of magnitude higher than for ITP and IDP.
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pH, indicating that the charge imbalance of the exchanged substrates is compensated by the movement of protons. Furthermore, no uptake of [8,5'-3H]GDP or [8-3H]GTP by unloaded liposomes was observed even in the presence of an energy input (either membrane potential or pH gradient). In other experiments it was found that the rate of 1 µM [8-3H]GTP uptake by proteoliposomes containing 2 mM GDP increased approximately three times on decreasing the external pH from 8.0 to 6.5 at a fixed internal pH of 8.0 (see Ref. 20 for the experimental conditions), whereas the rate of GTP/GTP exchange was virtually unaffected (not shown). Taken together, these results indicate that the reconstituted Ggc1p catalyzes an electroneutral H+-compensated GTP/GDP heteroexchange.
Mitochondria Lacking ggc1 Are Impaired in GTP Uptake and Contain Reduced Levels of GTPHaving established the transport function of Ggc1p by in vitro assays, the effect of deleting its gene on yeast cells was investigated. We first measured the contents of GTP and GDP in the mitochondria of wild-type and mutant cells. The amount of GTP was approximately 7-fold lower in ggc1
mitochondria than in the organelles from wild-type cells (Fig. 5A). Vice versa the amount of GDP was approximately 5.5-fold higher in ggc1
than in wild-type mitochondria (Fig. 5A). These results are consistent with Ggc1p controlling the entry of GTP and the exit of GDP.
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mitochondria. No GTP/GTP exchange activity was detected upon reconstitution of the mitochondrial extracts from the knock-out strain (Fig. 5B). In contrast, an active GTP/GTP exchange was observed using parental mitochondrial extracts (Fig. 5B). The reconstituted GTP/GTP exchange was inhibited markedly by 2 mM pyridoxal 5'-phosphate, 2 mM bathophenanthroline, or 0.05% tannic acid and by the Ggc1p substrates GDP and dGTP (but not by ADP, ATP, CDP, and CTP) added at a concentration of 20 µM together with 1 µM [8-3H]GTP (data not shown). Similar results were obtained by measuring the [8,5'-3H]GDP/GDP and the [
-33P]dGTP/dGTP exchanges in proteoliposomes reconstituted with mitochondrial extracts from wild-type and ggc1
cells. Therefore, the Ggc1p present in the mitochondria exhibits the same specificity and inhibitor sensitivity than the reconstituted protein. As a control, Fig. 5B shows that, compared with the proteoliposomes reconstituted with wild-type extracts, in those reconstituted with ggc1
extracts the phosphate/phosphate exchange and (not shown), the ADP/ADP exchange fell by approximately 60% but was not abolished. When analyzing the levels of several mitochondrial proteins, we found that Ggc1p was completely absent in the mutant mitochondria (Fig. 5C). However, the amounts of the phosphate and the ADP/ATP carriers and (not shown) the oxaloacetate-sulfate and the thiamine pyrophosphate carriers and of cytochrome c1 and subunit 9 of complex III but not of porin were 5060% lower in ggc1
mitochondria than in the organelles from wild-type cells (Fig. 5C). Therefore, in the mutant mitochondria, Ggc1p and GTP transport are completely absent, whereas the activities of other transporters are diminished because the transporters are present in smaller amounts in ggc1
than in wild-type mitochondria.
Because the presence of a membrane potential (
) across the inner membrane is a prerequisite for any protein transport into or across this membrane ((import) (21), we assessed the membrane potential of ggc1
mitochondria by using the fluorescent dye DiSC (3, 5, 22). The difference between the fluorescence after the addition of mitochondria and substrates and that after the subsequent addition of the potassium ionophore valinomycin (in the presence of external K+, leading to a complete dissipation of 
) is taken as an assessment of the mitochondrial membrane potential (18). The decrease in valinomycin-sensitive fluorescence observed with ggc1
mitochondria was only approximately 4% of that observed with wild-type mitochondria (Fig. 5D), demonstrating that in vitro the membrane potential of ggc1
mitochondria was very low.
Ggc1
Yeast Cells Are Not Able to Grow on Nonfermentable Carbon Sources and Have Lost Their DNAThe ggc1
mutant was also tested for its ability to utilize different carbon sources. Yeast cells lacking ggc1 showed substantial growth on YP medium containing fermentable carbon sources (glucose or galactose), similarly to the wild-type strain. However, they did not grow on the same medium containing nonfermentable substrates (glycerol, lactate, ethanol, acetate, pyruvate, or oxaloacetate) (data not shown). It should be noted that, in wild-type yeast cells, we found by quantitative immunoblotting that Ggc1p was expressed at similar levels on fermentable (glucose and galoctose) and nonfermentable (lactate, glycerol, ethanol, and acetate) carbon sources (data not shown). The abundance of Ggc1p in mitochondria from yeast cells fed on galactose was 210 ± 47 pmol/mg of protein, in four determinations. The lack of growth on lactate was observed previously upon YDL198c deletion in the YPH499 strain (23), whereas no substantial defect on glycerol was found upon disruption of YDL198c in the W303 strain (9).
The inability of ggc1
mutant cells to grow on nonfermentable media led us to check whether these cells had lost their mitochondrial genome. To address this problem, mutant cells were stained with the DNA-specific dye DAPI and examined by fluorescence microscopy. The major fluorescence source in the central region of the cells, corresponding to DAPI-stained nuclear DNA, was observed both in wild-type and in ggc1
cells (Fig. 6). In contrast, the small and weak fluorescent spots in the cell periphery, corresponding to mtDNA, were observed only in wild-type cells, indicating that ggc1
cells were devoid of mitochondrial DNA (Fig. 6).
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| DISCUSSION |
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Besides transporting GTP and GDP with high efficiency, reconstituted Ggc1p also transports the corresponding deoxynucleotides, the structurally related ITP and IDP, and, to a much lesser extent, the (deoxy)nucleoside di- and triphosphates of U and T, but none of the many other compounds tested. The substrate specificity of Ggc1p is distinct from that of any other previously characterized member of the mitochondrial carrier family. In particular, Ggc1p differs markedly from the well known ADP/ATP carrier (34, 35), because both the yeast and the human ADP/ATP carrier isoforms transport-only (deoxy)adenine nucleotides are strongly inhibited by carboxyatractyloside and bongkrekic acid and share only 914 and 1618% of identical amino acids, respectively, with the Ggc1p. Ggc1p is also quite different from the human deoxynucleotide carrier (36) and its most closely related protein in S. cerevisiae (the thiamine pyrophosphate carrier (Tpc1p (20)), because deoxynucleotide carrier transports all (deoxy)NDPs and less efficiently the corresponding (deoxy)NTPs, whereas Tpc1p transports all of the (deoxy)nucleotides with the following order of efficiency: NMPs > NDPs > NTPs. Furthermore, at variance with Ggc1p, Tpc1p catalyzes both the uniport and the exchange modes of transport.
In ggc1
yeast cells the mitochondrial content of GTP is drastically decreased, indicating that Ggc1p catalyzes the uptake of GTP into the mitochondrial matrix. In the mitochondria, GTP is converted to GDP (in protein synthesis for the formation of the initiation complex and for the elongation of the polypeptide chain, by GTP-AMP phosphotransferase and by GTPases) or incorporated into the various types of RNA present in the mitochondria, including the RNA primers, which are required for the initiation of DNA replication and repair. Therefore, because in S. cerevisiae GTP is not synthesized in the mitochondrial matrix, Ggc1p appears to be essential for a number of major processes occurring in the mitochondria that depend on the availability of intramitochondrial GTP, such as the initiation of DNA replication and repair, protein synthesis, and recovery of AMP. Because Ggc1p functions by a strict exchange mechanism, the carrier-mediated uptake of GTP requires the efflux of a counter-substrate. On the basis of our transport measurements, GDP, that is produced from GTP intramitochondrially and is phosphorylated by nucleoside diphosphate kinase in the intermembrane space, may serve as the counter-substrate of Ggc1p for GTP. Therefore, the main physiological role of Ggc1p is most likely to catalyze the uptake of GTP into the mitochondrial matrix in exchange for internal GDP. The results obtained by imposing an external energy gradient on our simple liposomal system show that the charge imbalance of the GTP/GDP heteroexchange is compensated by H+ carried by Ggc1p in the same direction as GTP. The physiological consequence of this finding is that in mitochondria the GTPout/GDPin exchange catalyzed by Ggc1p is driven by the
pH component of the proton motive force generated by electron transport and is unaffected by its electrical component. The H+-compensated electroneutral type of mechanism of the newly identified GTP/GDP carrier is consistent with its main function (to import GTP in exchange for matrix GDP) and is different from that of the well studied ADP/ATP carrier, which is electrophoretic and
pH-insensitive (37). Another function of Ggc1p may be to catalyze the uptake of dGTP into the mitochondria where it is required for DNA replication and repair. However, the affinity of dGTP for Ggc1p is more than 1 order of magnitude lower than that of GTP. Furthermore, deoxynucleotides can be imported by Tpc1p (see Ref. 20), which is the protein encoded by the yeast genome with the highest sequence similarity to the human deoxynucleotide carrier.
The importance of Ggc1p is highlighted by the observation that the ggc1 null mutant does not grow on any nonfermentable carbon source and has no mitochondrial DNA. The complete loss of mtDNA in ggc1
cells shows that the ggc1 gene product is essential for the maintenance of mtDNA. The involvement of Ggc1p in mtDNA maintenance is in agreement with the previous observation that Ggc1p is a multicopy suppressor of the temperature-sensitive defect of the abf2 null mutant (9). Abf2p is a histone-like mitochondrial DNA-binding protein that is required for maintenance of the yeast mitochondrial genome at 37 °C. Our results suggest that Abf2p plays an accessory role to Ggc1p in a GTP-dependent reaction involved in mtDNA maintenance, and hence its inactivation is rescued by the presence of Ggc1p at 2528 °C and by Ggc1p overexpression at 37 °C (9). One possibility is that Ggc1p promotes the replication of the mtDNA by stimulating the synthesis of the RNA primers by the enzymes mtRNA polymerase and primase. Interestingly, the mammalian counterpart of Abf2p has been shown to be a limiting factor for mtDNA replication (38). The identification of the mitochondrial GTP/GDP carrier reported here provides a new tool for gaining further insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of mtDNA maintenance and metabolism in yeast.
During the revision of this work an accumulation of iron in the mitochondria of yeast cells lacking the yhm1 gene, i.e. the ggc1 gene, was published (39). There are no data available on the role of intramitochondrial guanine nucleotides on iron metabolism in yeast and higher eukaryotes. However, it may be speculated that the Ggc1p-mediated import of GTP into the mitochondrial matrix is required for or regulates a reaction involved in entry/exit of iron into/from the mitochondria or in the synthesis of heme and of iron-sulfur clusters. It is interesting that the bacterial membrane protein FeoB, which is essential for Fe(II) uptake in bacteria, contains a G protein similar to small regulatory G proteins found in eukaryotes and that the function of the G protein is required for Fe(II) uptake through the FeoB-dependent system (40). It is also possible that iron accumulation in mitochondria of yhm1
yeast cells is a secondary effect of the mitochondrial lesions mentioned above caused by the shortage of GTP in the mitochondria. Further studies are necessary to clarify how the Ggc1p-catalyzed transport of guanine nucleotides across the mitochondrial membrane influences iron metabolism.
| FOOTNOTES |
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¶ To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 39-805443374; Fax: 39-805442770; E-mail: fpalm{at}farmbiol.uniba.it.
1 The abbreviations used are: PIPES, piperazine-N,N'-bis-(2-ethanesulfonic acid); mtDNA, mitochondrial DNA; DAPI, 4',6-diamidino-2'-phenylindole-dihydrochrolide. ![]()
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