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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 281, Issue 23, 16117-16127, June 9, 2006
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From the
Institute for Biochemistry II, Goethe University Medical School, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt, Germany and the
Universität Duisburg-Essen, Fachbereich Biologie und Geografie, Strukturelle und Medizinische Biochemie, Universitätsstrasse, 45117 Essen, Germany
Received for publication, November 29, 2005 , and in revised form, March 7, 2006.
| ABSTRACT |
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-strand that could bind in parallel or antiparallel orientation to the
2-strand of SUMO due to the environment of the hydrophobic core. A negative charge imposed by a stretch of neighboring acidic amino acids and/or phosphorylated serine residues determines its specificity in binding to distinct SUMO paralogues and can modulate the spatial orientation of SUMO-SIM interactions. | INTRODUCTION |
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The structures of all three SUMO paralogues resemble the globular and compact Ub-like fold (6, 7). The differences of SUMO1 and SUMO2 are mostly found in the second
-strand and the
-helix of both proteins (7). In cells, different SUMO paralogues appear to share common properties but also have some distinct functions. For example, the promyelocytic leukemia protein is conjugated to all three SUMO paralogs (8, 9), whereas RanGAP1 is preferentially modified with SUMO1 (10) and topoisomerase II with SUMO2/3 during mitosis (11). Furthermore, the distribution of the SUMO paralogues within cells seems to be different. SUMO1 is uniquely found within the nucleoli, the nuclear envelope, and cytoplasmic foci, whereas SUMO2/3 are accrued on chromosomes at an earlier point in the nuclear reformation process (12). Interestingly, there is a larger pool of free, non-conjugated SUMO2/3 than of SUMO1 (10).
In addition to targeting different substrate proteins, the functional properties of SUMO isoforms in vivo might also reflect their ability to mediate distinct protein-protein interactions. Indeed, recent studies have shown that SUMO paralogues can promote non-covalent binding to other proteins containing specific motifs that recognize SUMO paralogues. Minty and coworkers defined a Ser-Xaa-Ser motif surrounded by hydrophobic and acidic amino acids as a SUMO-interacting motif (SIM) (13). Biophysical studies of the SIM in PIAS revealed that the small hydrophobic region is an essential determinant of SUMO recognition (14). Moreover, the SUMO-binding motif was proposed as Lys-Xaa35-[Val/Ile]-[Ile/Leu]2-Xaa3-[Asp/Glu/Gln/Asn]-[Asp/Glu]2 in yeast proteins (15). Recent publications revealed that the hydrophobic core can bind both parallel and antiparallel to SUMO (16, 17). It is thought that sumoylated targets may control cell functions depending on their ability to interact with effectors containing SUMO-binding motifs. However, most of the SUMO interacting studies were done with the SUMO1 paralogue.
In this study we describe the identification and characterization of novel SUMO1- and SUMO2-binding partners containing a universal SIM. The molecular and structural details are presented explaining the basis for SIM binding to distinct SUMO paralogues. We show that the E3 ligase PIASx
is phosphorylated in vivo within the SIM and that phosphorylation influences its binding to SUMO1 but not to SUMO2. In the case of TTRAP, a protein that binds SUMO2 much stronger than SUMO1, and PIASx
we show that negative charged amino acids surrounding the hydrophobic core influence binding to SUMO1 but not to SUMO2.
| EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES |
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GG) and SUMO2(
GG) were subcloned in pYTH9 vector between SalI and BglII restriction site creating fusion proteins with Gal4-DNA-binding domain. Both vectors were introduced using lithium acetate/polyethylene glycol transfomation with herring testis carrier DNA into Y190 yeast strain cDNA libraries were then similarily introduced and transformed cells were grown on agar plates containing a synthetic dropout medium (BD Bioscience) without leucine, tryptophan, histidine, and with 25 mM 3-amino-1,2,4-triazole. Colonies that grew on the selection medium were transferred to a filter and assayed for
-galactosidase activity with substrate X-gal (5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-
D-galactopyranoside).
Plasmid DNA was extracted using a glass bead disruption method and were amplified by transformation and lysis of DH5
bacteria. Plasmids were then retransformed into yeast containing the bait to confirm binding and grown on the same agar plates as described above. After X-gal test plasmids were sequenced.
To compare the strength of interaction between SUMO1 and SUMO2, 1.5 µg of each plasmid were retransformed in yeast containing SUMO1 and SUMO2 in parallel and grown on the agar plates described above. After 6 days three different colonies (if colonies grew at all) were replicated to another agar plate. After 3 days colonies were transferred to a filter to compare the growth of yeast containing SUMO1 and SUMO2 and the interacting partners.
Plasmids and MutagenesisHA-TTRAP-pcDNA3 plasmid was described previously (18). HA-TTRAP SUMO-binding mutants were generated with site-directed mutagenesis by PCR using QuikChange (Stratagene). HA-TTRAP SIM mutant was constructed using the primer pair 5'-TTACCCAACAACGCTGCGGATGTCTGGGAGTTTTTG-3' and 5'-CAAAAACTCCCAGACATCCGCAGCGTTGTTGGGTAA-3' introducing two alanines and primer pair 5'-CCCAACAACGCTGCGGCTGCCTGGGAGTTTTTGGGCAAA-3' and 5'-TTTGCCCAAAAACTCCCAGGCAGCCGCAGCGTTGTTGGG-3' to introduce two further alanines. GST-SUMO2 and YFP-UBC9 were kindly provided by Frauke Melchior and FLAG-PIAS1, GST-SUMO1, and FLAG-PIAS2 (PIASx
) by Jorma Palvimo. GST-TTRAP was generously provided by Danny Huylebroeck.
Acidic deletion mutants were constructed using site-directed mutagenesis. Sequences of the primers are available upon request. FLAG-PIAS3 was kindly provided by Helene Boeuf and FLAG-Sp100 and EGFP-Sp100 by Hans Will.
Cell Culture and Transfections, Cell Lysis, GST Pulldown, SDS-PAGE, and Western BlotAll these techniques were done as described before (19). The HA antibody was used from Santa Cruz Biotechnology, FLAG M2 antibody form Sigma and GFP/YFP antibody form BD Bioscience.
Protein Expression and Purification for NMR StudiesFull-length SUMO1 and SUMO2 were cloned as GST fusions into pET-41a vectors (Novagen), expressed in bacteria on either LB medium (for non-marked protein) or minimal medium with 15NH4Cl and [13C6]glucose for labeled protein. The recombinant protein was purified on a GSH resin (Amersham Biosciences) according to manufacturer's instruction and cleaved with thrombin, leaving the extension Gly-Ser in N-term of the full length SUMO; concentrators (Amicon) were used for tag removal and concentration. The protein was lyophilyzed and stored at 20 °C.
NMR Spectra Acquisition and AssignmentAll measurements were made at 27 °C in 25 mM Phosphate buffer at pH 7. Triple resonance and two-dimensional experiments were performed on a Varian Inova 600 equipped with shielded Z gradients. Three-dimensional NMR spectra were processed using the standard Bruker software XWINNMR. Two-dimensional NMR spectra were processed using NMRpipe (42). Analysis and visual representation of two-dimensional spectra were performed using Sparky (T. D. Goddard and D. G. Kneller, University of California, San Francisco), and three-dimensional spectra were analyzed with the program Aurelia (Bruker). Assignment of SUMO2 was generated using the spectra HNCA, HNCACB, CBCA(CO)NH, HC(CO)NH, and C(CO)NH.
NMR Titration ExperimentsFor peptide titration experiments heteronuclear single quantum coherence (HSQC) spectra were performed on 15N-labeled SUMO1 or SUMO2 (300 mM in 25 mM phosphate buffer, pH 7). Unlabeled peptides were chemically synthetized by Thermo Electron GmbH, dissolved to a concentration of 2.7 mM in 25 mM phosphate buffer, pH 7, and titrated to the protein to reach a final peptide:SUMO ratio of 1.36:1. No precipitation could be observed even at the highest peptide concentrations. KD values were measured by two different methods, depending on the exchange regime. For amino acids in fast exchange regime, at each titration step, the distance of each peak from its original position was measured using the normalization proposed before (20). The obtained curves were fitted to a Hill 4-parameter model using the software SigmaPlot.
Bioinformatical AnalysisAll sequence data base searches were performed with a non-redundant data set constructed from current releases of Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL, and GenPept (21, 22). Generalized profile construction (23) and searches were run locally using the pftools package, version 2.1. Generalized profiles were constructed using the BLOSUM45 substitution matrix (24) and default penalties of 2.1 for gap opening and 0.2 for gap extension. The statistical significance of profile matches was derived from the analysis of the score distribution of a randomized data base (25).
Tryptic Digestion of PIAS and Detection of the Resulting Fragments by MALDI SpectrometryHEK 293T cells were transfected with FLAG-PIAS and lysed, and the FLAG-PIAS expression was checked with Western blot analysis as described before. Immunoprecipitation of FLAG-PIAS was done with M2-agarose from Sigma according to manual instruction. Immunoprecipitated PIAS was loaded on SDS-PAGE gel and stained with Coomassie. The band containing PIAS was cut out of the gel and transferred into a microtube. As a negative control, a same sized bit of the gel cut from a region containing no protein and further handled as the probe. Except the digestion itself, all further steps were performed at room temperature under agitation (1000 rpm). The band was destained overnight using 0.5 ml of acetic acid/methanol/water 1:2:7 (v:v:v). It was washed for 4 h with water, dried with a SpeedVac, washed with (50% acetonitrile, 50% 0.2 M NH4HCO3 in water, pH 8.9), and dried with a SpeedVac again. The band was soaked with 15 µl of 0.2 M NH4HCO3 in water, pH 8.9, containing 33 µg·ml1 trypsin proteomic grade (Sigma). The gel was reduced into little bits using the heat-rounded tip of a pasteur pipette and incubated at 37 °C for 24 h. The bits were washed with water for 2 h, dried with a SpeedVac, and covered with 50 µl of formic acid/water/isopropanol 1:3:2 (v:v:v) saturated with
-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid. After overnight incubation, tubes were opened to allow crytallisation of the
-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid together with the extracted peptides. The obtained solution was pipetted onto the MALDI plate avoiding to pipette gel bits. Measurements were made in reflector-positive mode, low mass gate set at 500 Da, and monitoring the 13-kDa range.
| RESULTS |
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, and UBC9 (Fig. 1C). As expected, SUMO3 bound with a similar affinity to these proteins as SUMO1 and SUMO2 did. Characterization of SUMO-interacting Motif in TTRAPTTRAP was originally found as a protein interacting with members of the tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNF-R) superfamily as well as several TRAFs (18). Since TTRAP bound more potently to SUMO2 than SUMO1 in yeast (Fig. 1B), we analyzed the interactions between SUMO1 and SUMO2 with TTRAP in more details. When cell lysates expressing HA-TTRAP were incubated with beads coupled to GST, GST-SUMO1, GST-SUMO2, or GST-SUMO3, TTRAP bound more potently to SUMO2 and SUMO3 than to SUMO1 (Fig. 2, A and B). TTRAP did not contain one of the published SUMO-binding domains. However, we could find the sequence I-V-D-V at positions 280284, which is the inversion of the proposed V/I-X-V/I-V/I SUMO-interacting motif (14). Recently, it was shown that this hydrophobic part could bind both parallel and antiparallel to SUMO so that these four amino acids could be a SUMO-binding domain as well (17). We mutated all four amino acids to alanine (HA-TTRAP-SIM*) and completely abolished binding to all SUMO isoforms (Fig. 2B). Since these binding assays were performed in yeast and mammalian cells, they raised a concern whether additional cellular proteins might contribute to indirect binding between SUMO and TTRAP. To verify their interaction in vitro system, full-length TTRAP and TTRAP-SIM* were expressed and purified as a GST fusion protein in bacteria and challenged with recombinant SUMO2. As shown in Fig. 2C, SUMO2 bound to GST-TTRAP but not to GST alone or GST-TTRAP-SIM*. This result confirmed that the SIM of TTRAP directly interacts with SUMO2 and that this signature motif is essential for SUMO binding to full size TTRAP.
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An alignment of all SUMO-interacting motifs revealed that they all harbored a hydrophobic core sequence consisting of stretches of three or four hydrophobic Ile, Leu, or Val residues plus one acidic/polar residue at position 2 or 3. The sequences surrounding this core-binding domain are predicted to be disordered and have a net negative charge due to a stretch of acidic amino acid residues (Fig. 3C). The stretch of acidic amino acids can be either at the C- or at the N-terminal site of the hydrophobic core. Furthermore, a spacer containing a conserved threonine can separate the hydrophobic part from the acidic one. Interestingly, the majority of SIMs contains one or more serines or threonines, being potential phosphorylation sites in vivo.
Biophysical Parameters Underlying Binding of SIMs to Different SUMO ParaloguesWe used NMR spectroscopy to gain detailed insights into the binding of different SIM motifs to SUMO1 or SUMO2. In typical NMR titrations, binding of a ligand to a protein influences the environment of the atoms of the protein, especially in the binding interface between the protein and the ligand. Such perturbations are easily observable as modification of the frequency and intensity of resonances in HSQC spectra during a titration experiment. We used the already published assignment of SUMO1 (34) and measured a set of three-dimensional spectra to assign the resonances of all atoms in the backbone and side chains of SUMO2 (supplemental Fig. 1).
To characterize the binding interface on SUMO paralogues and different SIMs we chose to study the SIMs of PIASx
, which interact with equal strength with SUMO1 and SUMO2 (Fig. 1, B and C) and contain a stretch of acidic amino acids and several putative serine phosphorylation sites. We also analyzed the SIM of TTRAP, which interacts predominantly with SUMO2 in vivo and in vitro experiments and lacks the acidic tract. Thus, three different PIASx
peptides and one TTRAP peptide were synthesized to investigate the binding characteristics of SUMO1 and SUMO2 to these peptides (Fig. 4A and supplemental Fig. 2).
Most of the amino acids in slow exchange in the titrations of SUMO1 and SUMO2 with SIMPIASx
are found in the
2-strand and
-helix of those proteins (Fig. 4, B and C). The KD associated with the amino acids in slow exchange is estimated to be 3 µM for SUMO1 and 2 µM for SUMO2, which is in good agreement with the results derived from isothermal titration calorimetry measurements (14).
The binding surface of the other peptides (SIMTTRAP, SIMpPIASx
, SIMPIASx
short) was found to be on the same position on SUMO1 and SUMO2 showing that this surface represents a general binding surface for the SIM on SUMO (Fig. 4D). Since this surface is partly constituted by a side of the
-sheet of SUMO, and the hydrophobic core of the SIM has a sequence typical of a
-strand, we propose that the hydrophobic core of the SIM binds to the
2-strand of SUMO by forming an intermolecular
-sheet.
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Regulates Its Binding to SUMO1According to the KD values SIMPIASx
binds with similar affinity to SUMO1 and SUMO2. However, the curves of these two titrations have different shapes: Whereas the curves obtained in the titration of SUMO2 with SIMPIASx
have the expected shape for a simple 1:1 protein to peptide binding, the curves obtained in the titration of SUMO1 with this peptide have an unexpected sigmoidal shape (Fig. 5A). Such curves are also observed in the titration of SUMO1 with SIMPIASx
short. The titration curves of SUMO1 and SUMO2 with SIMpPIASx
have the classical shape, showing that the phosphorylation of the SIM is sufficient to change from one to the other binding mode. Three explanations can be invoked for the sigmoid shape of the titration curves of SUMO1 with SIMPIASx
. The first possibility is that these peptides could have two binding interfaces on SUMO. However, our results show no evidence for a second binding site on SUMO, and the small size of SIMPIASx
short makes it unlikely that it binds SUMO through two different sites. The second possibility is that SIMPIASx
binds in different orientations to SUMO1, which can be ruled out according to the underlying calculations. Alternatively, those peptides have only one binding site on SUMO which conformation can be changed upon binding of the peptide (induced fit).
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and SIMpPIASx
are compared, it appears that the only amino acid that has a significantly different behavior in these two titrations is Lys37, which is in fast exchange with SIMPIASx
and in fast intermediate exchange with SIMpPIASx
. This shows that the phosphate group of SIMpPIASx
is likely to bind to SUMO1 in the neighborhood of this lysine (the same difference is observed for the Lys34 of SUMO2, which is equivalent to the Lys37 of SUMO1, confirming this hypothesis). The Lys37 of SUMO1 and the Lys34 of SUMO2 are situated at the end of the
2-strand, which is much more bent in SUMO1 than in SUMO2. In close proximity to the Lys37 of SUMO1 and the Lys34 of SUMO1 is another lysine residue (Lys39 in SUMO1 and Lys36 in SUMO2) that cannot be observed due to HSQC peaks overlap and whose conformation is different in both SUMO isoforms: the Lys39 side chain of SUMO1 points into the binding site, whereas the Lys36 of SUMO2 points away from the SIM-binding site. Therefore it could be possible that the negatively charged phosphate group of SIMpPIASx
interacts with the positively charged Lys39 of SUMO1 causing a conformational change favorable for SIMpPIASx
binding and strongly affecting the neighboring Lys37. The absence of a phosphate group in SIMPIASx
would make this transition more difficult to achieve. A high SIMPIASx
concentration would be required to maintain SUMO1 in the binding-favorable conformation, producing the observed two-step titration curve. Whether phosphorylation is present or not does not influence the binding of PIAS peptides to SUMO2 much, since the conformation of Lys34 is already favorable. The recently published structures of SUMO1 in complex with a PIAS derived peptide (17) and with a RanBP2 derived peptide (16) confirm this hypothesis. In both structures the end of the
2-strand of SUMO1 is less bent than in the free SUMO1 (6), and the Lys39 side chain of SUMO1 moved away from the SIM-binding site to accommodate the peptide.
We note that the interaction between the Lys37 of SUMO1 and the phosphate group of SIMpPIASx
indicates the orientation in which the SIM binds to SUMO: to take place while having the
2-strand of SUMO binding the hydrophobic core of the SIM, those two elements must be parallel to each other. This has been recently verified by the structure published by Song et al. (17).
PIASxa Is Phosphorylated within the SIM in VivoThese biophysical findings indicate that serine phosphorylation of the SIM may be relevant for in vivo interactions between SUMO1 and the SIMPIASx
. Accordingly, mutations of corresponding serines to alanines in the SIMPIASx
revealed that these serines are required for its binding to SUMO1 in yeast cells (13). We therefore investigated the phosphorylation pattern of the SIM of PIASx
in cells. MALDI fingerprinting was used to verify in vivo phosphorylation of PIASx
at the putative phosphorylation site within the SIM. Masses corresponding to different phosphorylated fragments upon trypsin digestion contained in the SIM were observed in several spectra, in addition to less frequently observed masses corresponding the same fragments without phosphate incorporated (Fig. 5E; a more detailed table is given in the supplemental Fig. 3). This shows that the PIASx
proteins are phosphorylated within the SIM in vivo and indicates that this modification may be of functional importance for binding of SUMO1 to SIM in PIAS proteins.
We next tested whether phosphorylation of SIM is essential for binding to SUMO isoforms in GST pulldown assays. In contrast to previously published data whereby mutations of the corresponding serines to alanines in the SIM of PM-Scl75 blocked their binding to SUMO1 in yeast cells (13), we have not observed a significant decrease upon mutation of all three serine residues to alanine within the SIM motif of PIASx
(data not shown). This could be explained by a compensatory interaction between the negatively charged amino acid tract of SIMPIASx
and SIMpPIASx
with Lys78 of SUMO1 (Figs. 5, B and C). This interaction results in the similar affinity of non-phosphorylated and phosphorylated PIAS peptides binding to SUMO1 and SUMO2 (see below). Therefore, it is possible that PIAS phosphorylation in vivo may modulate the spatial orientation rather then affinities of PIAS binding to its sumoylated targets.
Contribution of Acidic Amino Acids in SIMs for SUMO1 and SUMO2 BindingA number of negatively charged amino acids (Glu, Asp) are present in the SIM of most proteins found in the yeast two-hybrid screens, which indicates that they may play a regulatory role in binding to SUMO. To investigate their role, we studied the binding of SUMO to SIMPIASx
short (Fig. 4A), a variant of the PIASx
peptide lacking the negatively charged amino acids tract. This peptide binds to SUMO1 with much lower affinity than SIMPIASx
(no resonance of any amino acid in the SIM-binding site is observed to be in the slow exchange regime) (Fig. 4B). However, the resonance of amino acids Ile22, Phe36, Val38, Lys39, Lys45, and Ser50 are in intermediate exchange. The KD value can be estimated to be higher than for SIMPIASx
and SIMpPIASx
and lower than 0.2 mM, a value obtained from titration curves of amino acids of SUMO outside the SIM-binding site. When studying the titration of SUMO1 with SIMPIASx
and with SIMpPIASx
, the resonance of Lys78 (situated in the loop between the
3- and
4-strands) was in slow exchange, whereas it was not in the SIMPIASx
short titration experiment. This further supports the notion of an interaction between the negatively charged amino acid tract of SIMPIASx
and SIMpPIASx
with Lys78 of SUMO1 (Fig. 5, B and C). This interaction results in the above described higher affinity of SUMO1 for SIMPIASx
and SIMpPIASx
than for SIMPIASx
short. In contrast, results obtained in the titration of SUMO2 with SIMPIASx
short are fairly similar to those obtained in the titration of SUMO2 with SIMPIASx
and SIMpPIASx
. Furthermore, SIMTTRAP, which has no tract of negatively charged amino acids, binds better to SUMO2 than to SUMO1. Taken together, these data show that negatively charged residues in the SIM make an important contribution to binding to SUMO1 but are only little involved in SUMO2 binding.
Acidic Amino Acids Influence Binding to SUMO1 but Not to SUMO2 in Vitro and in VivoTo examine whether the observation that acidic amino acids of SIMs influence binding to SUMO paralogues is a general phenomenon, we performed mutation studies and analyzed SUMO binding in both yeast and pulldown assays. We deleted the acidic part of several SUMO-interacting partners in a similar way as PIAS short peptide was created (Fig. 6A). These mutants were transformed into yeast or were used for GST pulldown assays. The yeast deletion mutants (Sp100, Senataxin, PIAS4, TOPORS) were transformed into yeast expressing SUMO1 and SUMO2 in parallel with the corresponding wild type SUMO-interacting partners. To compare the growth of yeast three different colonies of each retransformation were replated on a fresh agar plate with the same dropout medium. After 2 days the yeast was transferred to a filter paper, and the growth of yeast expressing SUMO1 or SUMO2 and either wild type or mutant constructs was compared (Fig. 6B). In all cases yeast containing SUMO1 and the acidic deletion mutants grew much slower than yeast containing SUMO2 and the deletion mutants, while yeast transformed with the wild type clones grew with equal speed in both cases. Furthermore we deleted acidic amino acids of the SIM in several SUMO-interacting partners (Sp100, PIAS1, PIAS3) and expressed them in mammalian cells. In GST pulldown assays with GST-SUMO1, GST-SUMO2, and GST-SUMO3, the results were similar to those obtained with the yeast two-hybrid system: binding to GST-SUMO1 was reduced or even abolished, whereas binding to SUMO2/3 was unaltered (Fig. 6C). Taken together, these results show that acidic amino acids and negative charges are important for binding to SUMO1 but not to SUMO2/3.
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| DISCUSSION |
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Several recent publications nicely describe the binding of the hydrophobic core to be the main mediator of SUMO binding. Our mutation studies in TTRAP support these results indicating that few hydrophobic amino acids are sufficient to mediate binding to SUMO. However, our in vivo studies in yeast show a completely different picture: only 1 out of 20 different yeast clones exclusively contains the hydrophobic core. All the others additionally contain acidic amino acids and sometimes putative phosphorylation sites. This suggests that amino acids surrounding the hydrophobic core also influence binding to SUMO.
Three different SUMO isoforms are expressed in eukaryotes, which differ mostly in the amino acid composition of the
2-strand and the
-helix (7), exactly the regions that we found to mediate binding to SIMs. This surface of SUMO can thus be regarded as a "code of specificity" of SUMO isoforms for the SUMO-SIM interaction. Interestingly, this region has been shown to be critical for the transcriptional inhibitory properties of SUMO (37). As the signature of the SIM motif is limited to the short
-strand forming motif, it should be possible to find the intermolecular strand either in parallel or antiparallel orientation, as long as backbone hydrogen binding can occur and the hydrophobic side chains are arranged in an inverse (reverse) manner. Indeed, we and others (16, 17) found the PIASx
peptides bound parallel to the
2-strand, whereas the RanBP2 fragment was shown to bind antiparallel to SUMO. Since the hydrophobic core of the SIM is preceded by acidic residues in RanBP2 and followed by acidic residues in PIAS, it can be expected that the position of the acidic residues tract observed in SIMs determine their orientation relatively to the
2-strand of SUMO. The negative charge borne by the acidic residues tract can be furthermore supported by phosphorylation of serine residues within the SIM. Phosphorylation, as well as negatively charged acidic residues, help to maintain specificity and orientation of binding of SUMO1 to different ligands thereby increasing the affinity by providing additional electrostatic interactions.
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The presented concept of surrounding charges determining the orientation of a peptide binding to SUMO resembles the binding mode of polyproline stretches when interacting with SH3 domains. The polyproline type II helices bind to SH3 domains in both N-C and C-N directions while forming similar hydrogen bond networks. In analogy to the basic amino acid tract flanking PXXP motifs, a negatively charged tract assists binding in the case of SIM motifs. The salt bridge formed between a positively charged residue in the flanking region of the polyproline type II helix to a negative residue in the SH3 domain resembles the strong binding between Lys78 of SUMO1 and the negatively charged residues following the hydrophobic core of the SIM of PIASx
. The similarity found in the binding of polyproline stretches and SH3 to the SIM-SUMO interaction entails us to define SIM ligands binding in antiparallel orientation to the
2-strand of SUMO as class I ligands (RanBP2) and those binding in parallel orientation as class II ligands (PIASx
).
Although the structures of SUMO and Ub are very similar, the binding surfaces of SUMO-SIM versus Ub-binding domains (UBDs) are clearly different (Fig. 7). At present, all currently tested SIMs show exclusive binding to SUMO isoforms but not to Ub or other Ub-like molecules. Although two other Ub-like proteins (NEDD8 and FAT10) have been implicated to bind to UBDs (38, 39), no known Ub-binding domain was shown to associate with SUMO isoforms, thus implicating that SUMO-SIM recognition is much more specific than Ub/NEDD8/FAT10 association with UBDs. In contrast to the formation of an intermolecular SIM-SUMO
-sheet, the interaction between UBDs and Ub is defined by a hydrophobic surface containing Ile 44 (40). This hydrophobic surface would correspond to the
3-strand of SUMO, which is located to the opposite side of the molecule in relation to the
2-strand where the SIM binds (Fig. 6). In principle all amino acids in the close vicinity of Ile44, which are exposed to the surface, can serve as key elements defining the specificity of UBDs. Despite these structural differences, the SUMO-SIM and the Ub-UBD interactions serve the same purpose: they are signaling pairs that transmit intracellular signals and regulate numerous cell functions.
In conclusion, this study describes the molecular details of specific interactions between SUMO1 and SUMO2 paralogues and SIMs and indicates the rational for their functional differences in vivo.
| FOOTNOTES |
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The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Figs. 13. ![]()
1 These authors contributed equally to this work. ![]()
2 Fellow of the Hessian Ministry for Science and Arts. ![]()
3 To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: Peter.Bayer{at}uni-due.de. 4 To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: Ivan.Dikic{at}biochem2.de.
5 The abbreviations used are: Ub, ubiquitin; SIM, SUMO-interacting motif; UIM, ubiquitin-interacting motif; X-gal, 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-
-D-galactopyranoside; HA, hemagglutinin; GST, glutathione S-transferase; GFP, green fluorescent protein; EGFP, enhanced GFP; YFP, yellow fluorescent protein; HSQC, heteronuclear single quantum coherence; MALDI, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization; SH, Src homology; UBD, Ub-binding domain. ![]()
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| REFERENCES |
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