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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 282, Issue 28, 20256-20263, July 13, 2007
A Ubiquitin-binding Motif in the Translesion DNA Polymerase Rev1 Mediates Its Essential Functional Interaction with Ubiquitinated Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen in Response to DNA Damage*From the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110
Received for publication, March 20, 2007 , and in revised form, May 4, 2007.
During normal DNA replication, the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) enhances the processivity of DNA polymerases at the replication fork. When DNA damage is encountered, PCNA is monoubiquitinated on Lys-164 by the Rad6Rad18 complex as the initiating step of translesion synthesis. DNA damage bypass by the translesion synthesis polymerase Rev1 is enhanced by the presence of ubiquitinated PCNA. Here we have carried out a mutational analysis of Rev1, and we have identified the functional domain in the C terminus of Rev1 that mediates interactions with PCNA. We show that a unique motif within this domain binds the ubiquitin moiety of ubiquitinated PCNA. Point mutations within this ubiquitin-binding motif of Rev1 (L821A,P822A,I825A) abolish its functional interaction with ubiquitinated PCNA in vitro and strongly attenuate damage-induced mutagenesis in vivo. Taken together, these studies suggest a specific mechanism by which the interaction between Rev1 and ubiquitinated PCNA is stabilized during the DNA damage response.
During normal progression of the cell cycle, replicative DNA polymerases are charged with the task of faithfully replicating host DNA. In eukaryotes, the B-family DNA polymerase (pol )3 and DNA polymerase synthesize the bulk of newly formed DNA (reviewed in Ref. 1). Both DNA polymerases possess a highly restrictive active site to promote proper Watson-Crick base pairing between the template strand and incoming bases (2). However, the restrictive nature of these enzymes also makes it inherently difficult for them to deal with DNA damage in the template DNA, and in general, the presence of DNA damage blocks the progression of the replication fork. This stalling activates one of several post-replication repair mechanisms that are designed to bypass damage in either an error-free or error-prone manner (reviewed in Refs. 35). These pathways are initiated by monoubiquitination of the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) on Lys-164 by Rad6Rad18.
During normal replication, PCNA serves as a processivity factor for the replicative DNA polymerases and coordinates the functions of enzymes on the lagging strand that are involved in the maturation of Okazaki fragments (reviewed in Refs. 6, 7). In order to carry out its DNA-associated functions, PCNA is loaded by the clamp loader replication factor C (RFC) in an ATP-dependent reaction (reviewed in Ref. 8). Elegant genetic studies have shown that mono-ubiquitination of PCNA activates translesion synthesis (TLS) by translesion DNA polymerases (911). The more open active site of TLS polymerases, particularly of those in the Y-family of DNA polymerases, permits bypass of a variety of DNA lesions present on the template DNA (reviewed in Ref. 12).
TLS in yeast consists of two branches, both of which require mono-ubiquitinated PCNA (PCNAUbi) for function. Bypass of UV damage, particularly cis-syn pyrimidine dimers, is mediated by pol
TLS of most forms of DNA damage involves the participation of three DNA polymerases, pol
Although pol
Although the requirement for PCNA mono-ubiquitination in damage-induced mutagenesis follows conclusively from genetic studies, the exact role of PCNAUbi remains to be established. All three DNA polymerases required for mutagenesis (pol
Recently, we identified Rev1 as a possible target for PCNAUbi in mutagenesis (18). PCNAUbi stimulates TLS by Rev1 more efficiently than PCNA does. Our model suggests that ubiquitination of PCNA may serve to localize Rev1 to stalled replication forks, which in turn recruits other components of the TLS machinery. This recruitment is likely mediated through the multiple interactions that Rev1 shows with TLS DNA polymerases, including pol Recent studies have shown that several Y-family DNA polymerases contain a conserved ubiquitin-binding motif (UBM), and these UBM motifs contribute to increased binding of the polymerases to artificial linear ubiquitin-PCNA fusion proteins (38, 39). However, whether these UBMs are important for functional interaction with the physiologically relevant form of PCNA, i.e. with ubiquitin attached to Lys-164 of PCNA, remains to be determined. Yeast Rev1 contains at least two sequences that mirror these conserved UBMs. In order to determine whether these motifs play a role in the interaction of Rev1 with PCNAUbi, and whether this interaction is physiologically relevant for mutagenesis, we have generated a series of Rev1 deletion and point mutants that either delete or mutate these motifs. By measuring on one hand the ability of these Rev1 mutants to physically and functionally interact with PCNA versus PCNAUbi, and on the other hand to promote mutagenesis in vivo, we conclude that a single ubiquitin-binding motif is responsible for regulating the interactions between Rev1 and PCNAUbi. This motif is close to or embedded in a domain of Rev1 that mediates basic interactions with PCNA regardless of its ubiquitination state.
DNA SubstratesAll oligonucleotide substrates were prepared as described (34). The linear oligonucleotide templates contained a biotin at both ends. They are as follows: V9, 5'-Bio-CCTTTGCGAATTCT25GCGGCTCCCTTCTTCTCCTCCCTCTCCCTTCCCT30-Bio; V9AP1, 5'-Bio-CCTTTGCGAATTCT25GCG0CTCCCTTCTTCTCCTCCCTCTCCCTTCCCT30-Bio; and V9AP2 (where 0 indicates a tetrahydrofuran moiety), 5'-Bio-CCTTTGCGAATTCT25-GC0GCTCCCTTCTTCTCCTCCCTCTCCCTTCCCT30-Bio. Primer C12 (5'-AGGGAAGGGAGAGGGAGGAGAAGAAGGGAG) was 5'-32P-labeled and hybridized to the templates followed by addition of a 2-fold molar excess of streptavidin to block the biotin ends.
EnzymesReplication protein A (RP-A), RFC lacking the N-terminal domain of Rfc1 (RFC-1 Rev1 MutantsPoint mutations in REV1 were made in plasmid pJN60 (2 µm ori GAL1-10 URA3 GST-REV1) by PCR mutagenesis (30). C-terminal truncation mutants were made in the same fashion by inserting stop codons by PCR mutagenesis at the sites of truncation. The desired mutant was verified by sequencing and subcloning of the relevant (mutant) section of the gene. This series of mutant plasmids was named pBL822-x. Mutants were transferred from pBL822-x to series pBL820-x plasmids (pRS315-based: Bluescript SKII+ LEU2 CEN6 ARSH4 rev1-x) for genetic analysis of rev1-x mutants. Plasmids and sequences are available from authors upon request.
Purification of Rev1 and Rev1 MutantsYeast strain BJ2168 (MATa ura3-52 trp1-289 leu2-3,112 prb1-1122 prc1-407 pep4-3) was transformed with pBL822-x, and transformants were grown on selective glycerol-lactate media and induced with galactose as described (43). The cells (
Ubiquitination of 32P-PCNAPCNA containing an N-terminal phosphorylatable tag (MRRASVGS-PCNA) was 32P-labeled by phosphorylation with cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase (catalytic subunit; New England Biolabs) and [
In Vitro Binding AssaysBinding studies of Rev1 (mutants) with PCNA and PCNAUbi were performed in 200-µl reactions containing 20 mM HEPES, pH 7.6, 75 mM NaCl, 1% glycerol, 1 mM EDTA, 8 mM magnesium acetate, 0.01% Triton X-100, and 25 µg/ml bovine serum albumin. 12 fmol each of 32P-PCNA and of 32P-PCNAUbi were incubated with 1 pmol of wild type or mutant GST-Rev1 for 30 min at 4 °C. The addition of the PCNA and Rev1-containing fractions brings the salt concentration of the assay to DNA Synthesis and Damage Bypass AssaysAssays were carried out on the indicated template-primers and quantitated as described previously (18). Briefly, standard 20-µl assays contained 40 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.8, 0.2 mg/ml bovine serum albumin, 8 mM magnesium acetate, 100 mM NaCl, 0.1 mM ATP, 100 µM each dNTPs, 100 fmol of template-primer, 1 pmol of RPA, 300 fmol of RFC, and 300 fmol of PCNA or PCNAUbi. The added NaCl was adjusted for each assay such that the final concentration was 100 mM, including contributions from enzyme storage buffers. Assays were preincubated at 30 °C for 45 s to pre-load the clamp. Reactions were then started by the addition of 100 fmol of Rev1 or mutant Rev1 as indicated and allowed to proceed for the indicated time. Products were resolved on a 10% polyacrylamide, 7 M urea gel and quantitated using a Storm PhosphorImager.
UV-induced MutagenesisThe pBL820-based REV1 plasmids were transformed into strain into strain SFY-1 (MAT
Salt Sensitivity of the Rev1 AssayWe have previously observed that Rev1 activity is stimulated by PCNA and hyper-stimulated by PCNAUbi. However, another group did not observe stimulation of Rev1 activity by PCNA nor by PCNAUbi (37). In order to understand the variabilities in the assay that might produce such disparate results, we measured Rev1 activity with or without clamp as a function of the salt concentration. The 101-nucleotide-long oligonucleotide template contained biotin residues at both ends. The template was primed in the middle with a 30-mer primer, and the template ends were blocked with streptavidin moieties. After coating of the single-stranded template regions with the single-stranded binding protein RPA, PCNA or PCNAUbi was loaded by RFC prior to initiating DNA synthesis at t = 0 by addition of Rev1. The terminal biotin-streptavidin anchors are important in preventing the loaded PCNA from sliding off the DNA (34). In the assay in Fig. 1, the primer was positioned such on the template that Rev1 has to insert one dCMP opposite a template guanine prior to encountering the abasic site (Fig. 1A).
Remarkably, at 75 mM NaCl Rev1 is proficient in abasic site bypass even in the absence of PCNA, and no further stimulation of Rev1 activity by the addition of PCNA was observed (Fig. 1, B and C). We attribute this lack of stimulation to the prolonged presence of the clamp loader RFC on the template, preventing association of Rev1 with PCNA or possibly even with the primer terminus. Such competition between the clamp loader and a DNA polymerase for interaction with the clamp has been well documented in Escherichia coli and also exists in eukaryotes (44, 45). In order to reduce interference by RFC for Rev1-PCNA-DNA complex formation, we have taken a combination of two approaches. First, in our studies we use a form of RFC, designated RFC-1
Design of Mutants for Rev1 Interaction AnalysisIn order to determine which domains of Rev1 may play a role in mediating its interaction with ubiquitinated PCNA, we systematically mutated several functional domains within Rev1, some of which have previously been shown to affect DNA damage-induced mutagenesis. One of these domains is a BRCT domain that is required for mutagenesis. The rev1-1 mutant contains a G193R mutation in a conserved hairpin turn in the BRCT domain; the mutant is defective for mutagenesis, and the mutant Rev1-1 protein has reduced polymerase activity (47). Recent studies have shown that Y-family DNA polymerases harbor highly conserved UBM containing an invariant Leu-Pro within the sequence (38). We identified two potential motifs in Rev1 that may serve this same function (UBM-1 and UBM-2, shown in Fig. 2A). We used triple alanine substitutions to generate point mutations within these two domains that we refer to as rev1-11 (UBM-1 mutant; L809A,P810A,M813A) and rev1-12 (UBM-2 mutant; L821A,P822A,I825A) (Fig. 2A). In addition, we made two C-terminal truncation mutants based upon multiple sequence alignment analysis of 14 divergent sequences (48). The truncations were made between blocks of conserved sequences. Truncation mutant rev1-5 ( 866985) retains the two putative UBM motifs and a proposed PCNA interaction motif (see below) but removes the proposed pol interaction motif, based upon studies with mouse Rev1 (36). A more extensive truncation mutant, rev1-4 ( 780985), removes both UBMs and the proposed C-terminal PCNA interaction motif.
Conflicting data exist with regard to the domain of Rev1 that binds PCNA. In one study, the PCNA-binding domain of human Rev1 was mapped, by two-hybrid analysis, to amino acids 9231047, corresponding approximately to yeast amino acids 775845. Therefore, the PCNA-binding domain proposed by Sale and co-workers (49) should be retained in Rev1-5 but not in the Rev1-4 truncation mutant. However, based upon two-hybrid analysis and pull-down assays, Guo et al. (50) concluded that PCNA binding is mediated by an N-terminal 240- amino acid fragment of Rev1 that also contains a BRCT domain, and binding was abrogated when the BRCT domain contained a glycine
Finally, we generated a catalytic null mutant of Rev1, rev1-3 (Y319A,F320A) with mutations in a A Conserved UBM within Rev1 Mediates Stimulation by PCNAUbi in VitroUsing our collection of Rev1 mutants, we investigated which mutants were unable to be stimulated by PCNA or ubiquitinated PCNA. We used two types of templateprimers. The first template-primer (V9AP1/C12) has a model abasic site positioned directly behind the primer terminus. This "standing start" assay likely reflects the substrate encountered by Rev1 in the cell when replicative polymerases stall at an abasic site. The rate of dCMP insertion at the abasic site by wild type Rev1 is stimulated by PCNA and hyper-stimulated by PCNAUbi (Fig. 2C, panel wt, lanes 16). The second substrate has a GGCG template sequence downstream of the primer terminus. Guanines are the preferred template residues for replication by Rev1 (31), and indeed, Rev1 alone replicated only the first two template G positions (Fig. 2C, panel wt, lanes 7, 10, and 13). However, addition of PCNAUbi, but not PCNA, stimulated Rev1 to replicate the template C residue and proceed to the next template G residue (Fig. 2C, lanes 9, 12, and 15). Therefore, the detection of these extended replication products is diagnostic for PCNAUbi function. Removal of the C-terminal 120 amino acids of Rev1 (Rev1-5) did not affect its basic catalytic properties nor its stimulation by PCNA and hyper-stimulation by PCNAUbi on either template-primer (Fig. 2C, compare panel wt with panel 5). However, deletion of an additional 86 amino acids while not affecting the basal activity of Rev1, completely eliminated the ability of the mutant Rev1-4 protein to be stimulated by PCNA or PCNAUbi (Fig. 2C, panel 4 versus panel 5). These data suggest that both the functional PCNA-binding motif and the functional ubiquitin interaction motifs are wholly or partially located in the 780865 domain of Rev1. This region contains the two putative UBMs. We next investigated the properties of Rev1-11 and Rev1-12 with point mutations in each of these UBMs.
Although Rev1-11, the UBM-1 mutant, displayed abasic site bypass activities similar to those of wild type, the UBM-2 mutant Rev1-12 still maintained the ability to be stimulated by PCNA, but hyper-stimulation by PCNAUbi was abolished (Fig. 2C, panel 11 versus panel 12; also compare F with D and E). Thus, mutations within the UBM-2 motif render Rev1 insensitive to the presence of the ubiquitination moiety on PCNA, and this UBM may serve to bind and recognize this specific modification of PCNA. Mutation rev1-1 within the BRCT domain of Rev1 has been shown previously to affect its polymerase activity (47). Consistent with this, the activity of Rev1-1 at an abasic site was only about 20% that of wild type (Fig. 2G). However, Rev1-1 activity was stimulated by PCNA and hyper-stimulated by PCNAUbi indicating that functional interactions with these two forms of the clamp were preserved in the mutant. UBM-2 Enhances Binding of Rev1 to PCNAUbiIn order to probe for direct interactions between Rev1 and the clamps, GST-Rev1 was incubated with 32P-labeled PCNA and PCNAUbi, and binding was observed after affinity capture of GST-Rev1 on glutathione beads and separation of bound proteins by SDS-PAGE, followed by PhosphorImager analysis (Fig. 3). Binding experiments contained 1 pmol of wild type or mutant GST-Rev1 and 12 fmol each of 32P-PCNA and 32P-PCNAUbi. Therefore, because of the vast excess of Rev1, no significant competition occurred between PCNA and PCNAUbi for binding Rev1. However, this experimental approach allows for a direct comparison of the relative binding affinities of PCNA and PCNAUbi for Rev1 in the same experiment. Wild type Rev1 has a strong preference for PCNAUbi compared with unmodified PCNA (Fig. 3, lane 5), and the small truncation mutant Rev1-5 also showed wild type-like binding properties (lane 8). Importantly, the larger truncation mutant Rev1-4 failed to bind PCNAUbi preferentially over PCNA (Fig. 3, compare lanes 7 and 8). However, in several experiments, PCNA binding by this mutant was significantly higher than background, indicating residual PCNA binding in the remaining part of Rev1 (Fig. 3, compare lanes 4 and 7). The UBM-1 mutant Rev1-11, which showed no defect in stimulated bypass synthesis, also displayed a strong binding preference of PCNAUbi over PCNA. In contrast, the UBM-2 mutant Rev1-12 that was defective for hyper-stimulation by PCNAUbi also was defective for preferential binding of PCNAUbi. However, binding of PCNA was comparable to wild type and significantly higher than background (Fig. 3, compare lanes 4 and 10). Interestingly, the BRCT domain mutant Rev1-1 still maintains preferential binding to PCNAUbi, although it does bind both PCNA and PCNAUbi less efficiently than wild type Rev1 does (Fig. 3, lane 6).
Damage-induced Mutagenesis Is Linked to PCNAUbi Binding by Rev1We used two genetic targets to measure the role of the various Rev1 domains in mutagenesis. The ochre allele arg4-17 has been used extensively to study Rev1 function in mutagenesis, and mutations in REV1 reduced UV-induced reversion of arg4-17 by as much as 1000-fold (52). In contrast, the forward mutation assay to canavanine resistance samples a wide variety of alterations that cause inactivation of the CAN1 gene. A patch plating assay was used to measure arg4-17 reversion in response to 20 J/m2 of UV254 treatment (Fig. 4A). As expected from previous studies, the catalytic null mutant (rev1-3) was proficient for UV mutagenesis (49, 53). However, both truncation mutants were defective for mutagenesis, as was the original rev1-1 allele with a mutation in the BRCT domain (52). Interestingly, mutations in the UBM-1 domain that did not disrupt physical and functional interactions also did not affect mutagenesis. However, allele rev1-12 with triple point mutations in UBM-2 that do disrupt these interactions was defective for UV mutagenesis.
These phenotypes were mirrored in the canavanine resistance assay, although in this assay residual UV mutagenesis was observed in the UBM-2 mutant rev1-12 (Fig. 4C). Consistent with these results, mutants rev1-3 and rev1-11 that were proficient for mutagenesis were also the only mutants that showed UV resistance comparable with wild type (Fig. 4B).
Two studies have recently been published (38, 39) that investigate the importance of the UBM of Y-family DNA polymerases for their function in vivo, and correlate these genetic results with in vitro interaction studies with ubiquitinated PCNA. However, the in vitro studies were performed with a chimeric protein that contains ubiquitin fused to the N terminus of PCNA. Surprisingly, such an artificial ubiquitin-PCNA fusion protein displayed increased physical interactions, compared with PCNA alone, with several Y-family enzymes, including Rev1. However, it remained to be established whether the physiologically relevant form of PCNAUbi, i.e. with the ubiquitin attached at the Lys-164 residue of PCNA, exhibited unique binding specificities for UBMs on the Y-family DNA polymerases. This question was addressed for Rev1 in this current study. Our studies suggest that all regulatory interactions with PCNAUbi reside in the C-terminal domain of Rev1.
The selective recruitment and binding of TLS DNA polymerases to ubiquitinated PCNA may be the main initiating events for TLS. However, only a rather modest increase in TLS by Rev1 is observed upon ubiquitination of PCNA, suggesting that this functional interaction alone may not be sufficient to mediate an abrupt switch between normal replication and TLS. Additional factors, among these the Cdc7/Dbf4 cell cycle kinase and the Pol32 subunit of pol
We investigated the importance of two putative UBMs in the Rev1 protein for physical and functional interactions with PCNAUbi. Whereas triple point mutations in UBM-1 (rev1-11) were phenotypically silent in vivo as well as in vitro, the analogous triple mutations in UBM-2 (rev1-12) resulted in strong phenotypes. The Rev1-12 protein no longer distinguishes between PCNA and PCNAUbi with regard to physical and functional interactions, and the mutant rev1-12 strain is severely defective for damage-induced mutagenesis. These genetic data of the Rev1 UBMs are in complete agreement with a recent mutational study of Rev1 in yeast and chicken (39). For the genetic experiments in yeast, this was to be expected because Guo et al. (39) generated very similar mutations (LPXXI
The studies with the other mutants support our conclusions. The Rev1-5 mutant with a small C-terminal truncation retains both UBM-2 as well as the PCNA-binding domain based upon mapping studies with human Rev1 (49) and was therefore expected to show no defects in vitro. This was indeed observed. However, this mutant lacks the interaction domain with pol In a recent study, Haracska et al. (37) reported that they were unable to reproduce our earlier study of the functional interactions of Rev1 with PCNA and PCNAUbi, i.e. they neither observed stimulation of Rev1 by PCNA nor by PCNAUbi and in addition did not detect binding of Rev1 to PCNA or PCNAUbi. It is unlikely that this difference can be attributed to the assay conditions, which were quite similar between the two studies. Moreover, minor differences in salt concentration cannot account for this disagreement as hyper-activation by PCNAUbi was observed under all salt concentrations between 75 and 150 mM NaCl (Fig. 1). One possible reason for the discrepancy is that Haracska et al. (37) used human rather than yeast ubiquitin to monoubiquitinate yeast PCNA. There are only three amino acid changes between yeast and human ubiquitin, and separate mutations at each of these positions that change the yeast to the human sequence do not affect yeast viability (54). However, whether these changes still sustain wild type DNA repair and mutagenesis capacity to our knowledge has not been determined. A recent study suggested that ubiquitin binding to Rev1 may be mediated in part through its N-terminal BRCT domain (50). Indeed, we also observed decreased binding of the BRCT mutant Rev1-1 to PCNA and to PCNAUbi (Fig. 4). However, Rev1-1 was also partially defective for DNA polymerase activity (Fig. 2G) (47). Interestingly, the mutant polymerase was still stimulated by PCNA and hyper-stimulated by PCNAUbi suggesting that functional stimulation by the ubiquitinated clamp remained. One possibility suggested by these diverse results is that the BRCT domain participates in stabilizing interactions with both the polymerase and the C-terminal domain. In the Rev1-1 mutant in which the BRCT domain is likely unfolded, destabilization of the other domains may result in a general dysfunction of all activities of the protein. Whether this general dysfunction is so severe to cause the known complete defect in mutagenesis in vivo, or whether the BRCT domain in addition shows specific essential interactions with other factors in mutagenesis remains to be determined.
* This work was supported in part by Grant GM032431 from the National Institutes of Health. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
1 Present address: Genentech, South San Francisco, CA 94080. 2 To whom correspondence should be addressed: Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 S. Euclid Ave., St. Louis, MO 63110. Tel.: 314-362-3872; E-mail: burgers{at}biochem.wustl.edu.
3 The abbreviations used are: pol, DNA polymerase; TLS, translesion synthesis; RPA, replication protein A; PCNA, proliferating cell nuclear antigen; PCNAUbi, PCNA mono-ubiquitinated at Lys-164; UBM, ubiquitin-binding motif; RFC, replication factor C.
We thank John Majors for critical discussions during the progress of this work and Carrie Stith for invaluable technical assistance.
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