scholarly journals Interactions between the Intrinsically Disordered Regions of hnRNP-A2 and TDP-43 Accelerate TDP-43′s Conformational Transition

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5930
Author(s):  
Wan-Chin Chiang ◽  
Ming-Hsuan Lee ◽  
Tsai-Chen Chen ◽  
Jie-rong Huang

Most biological functions involve protein–protein interactions. Our understanding of these interactions is based mainly on those of structured proteins, because encounters between intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) or proteins with intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are much less studied, regardless of the fact that more than half eukaryotic proteins contain IDRs. RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are a large family whose members almost all have IDRs in addition to RNA binding domains. These IDRs, having low sequence similarity, interact, but structural details on these interactions are still lacking. Here, using the IDRs of two RBPs (hnRNA-A2 and TDP-43) as a model, we demonstrate that the rate at which TDP-43′s IDR undergoes the neurodegenerative disease related α-helix-to-β-sheet transition increases in relation to the amount of hnRNP-A2′s IDR that is present. There are more than 1500 RBPs in human cells and most of them have IDRs. RBPs often join the same complexes to regulate genes. In addition to the structured RNA-recognition motifs, our study demonstrates a general mechanism through which RBPs may regulate each other’s functions through their IDRs.

2022 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Salem ◽  
Carter J. Wilson ◽  
Benjamin S. Rutledge ◽  
Allison Dilliott ◽  
Sali Farhan ◽  
...  

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the degeneration of both upper and lower motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. ALS is associated with protein misfolding and inclusion formation involving RNA-binding proteins, including TAR DNA-binding protein (TDP-43) and fused in sarcoma (FUS). The 125-kDa Matrin3 is a highly conserved nuclear DNA/RNA-binding protein that is implicated in many cellular processes, including binding and stabilizing mRNA, regulating mRNA nuclear export, modulating alternative splicing, and managing chromosomal distribution. Mutations in MATR3, the gene encoding Matrin3, have been identified as causal in familial ALS (fALS). Matrin3 lacks a prion-like domain that characterizes many other ALS-associated RNA-binding proteins, including TDP-43 and FUS, however, our bioinformatics analyses and preliminary studies document that Matrin3 contains long intrinsically disordered regions that may facilitate promiscuous interactions with many proteins and may contribute to its misfolding. In addition, these disordered regions in Matrin3 undergo numerous post-translational modifications, including phosphorylation, ubiquitination and acetylation that modulate the function and misfolding of the protein. Here we discuss the disordered nature of Matrin3 and review the factors that may promote its misfolding and aggregation, two elements that might explain its role in ALS pathogenesis.


Author(s):  
Srinivas Ayyadevara ◽  
Akshatha Ganne ◽  
Meenakshisundaram Balasubramaniam ◽  
Robert J. Shmookler Reis

AbstractA protein’s structure is determined by its amino acid sequence and post-translational modifications, and provides the basis for its physiological functions. Across all organisms, roughly a third of the proteome comprises proteins that contain highly unstructured or intrinsically disordered regions. Proteins comprising or containing extensive unstructured regions are referred to as intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). IDPs are believed to participate in complex physiological processes through refolding of IDP regions, dependent on their binding to a diverse array of potential protein partners. They thus play critical roles in the assembly and function of protein complexes. Recent advances in experimental and computational analyses predicted multiple interacting partners for the disordered regions of proteins, implying critical roles in signal transduction and regulation of biological processes. Numerous disordered proteins are sequestered into aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) where they are enriched even in serum, making them good candidates for serum biomarkers to enable early detection of AD.


Biomolecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 1216
Author(s):  
David Ortega-Alarcon ◽  
Rafael Claveria-Gimeno ◽  
Sonia Vega ◽  
Olga C. Jorge-Torres ◽  
Manel Esteller ◽  
...  

Intrinsic disorder plays an important functional role in proteins. Disordered regions are linked to posttranslational modifications, conformational switching, extra/intracellular trafficking, and allosteric control, among other phenomena. Disorder provides proteins with enhanced plasticity, resulting in a dynamic protein conformational/functional landscape, with well-structured and disordered regions displaying reciprocal, interdependent features. Although lacking well-defined conformation, disordered regions may affect the intrinsic stability and functional properties of ordered regions. MeCP2, methyl-CpG binding protein 2, is a multifunctional transcriptional regulator associated with neuronal development and maturation. MeCP2 multidomain structure makes it a prototype for multidomain, multifunctional, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDP). The methyl-binding domain (MBD) is one of the key domains in MeCP2, responsible for DNA recognition. It has been reported previously that the two disordered domains flanking MBD, the N-terminal domain (NTD) and the intervening domain (ID), increase the intrinsic stability of MBD against thermal denaturation. In order to prove unequivocally this stabilization effect, ruling out any artifactual result from monitoring the unfolding MBD with a local fluorescence probe (the single tryptophan in MBD) or from driving the protein unfolding by temperature, we have studied the MBD stability by differential scanning calorimetry (reporting on the global unfolding process) and chemical denaturation (altering intramolecular interactions by a different mechanism compared to thermal denaturation).


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Deiana ◽  
Sergio Forcelloni ◽  
Alessandro Porrello ◽  
Andrea Giansanti

AbstractMany studies about classification and the functional annotation of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are based on either the occurrence of long disordered regions or the fraction of disordered residues in the sequence. Taking into account both criteria we separate the human proteome, taken as a case study, into three variants of proteins: i) ordered proteins (ORDPs), ii) structured proteins with intrinsically disordered regions (IDPRs), and iii) intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). The focus of this work is on the different functional roles of IDPs and IDPRs, which up until now have been generally considered as a whole. Previous studies assigned a large set of functional roles to the general category of IDPs. We show here that IDPs and IDPRs have non-overlapping functional spectra, play different roles in human diseases, and deserve to be treated as distinct categories of proteins. IDPs enrich only a few classes, functions, and processes: nucleic acid binding proteins, chromatin binding proteins, transcription factors, and developmental processes. In contrast, IDPRs are spread over several functional protein classes and GO annotations which they partly share with ORDPs. As regards to diseases, we observe that IDPs enrich only cancer-related proteins, at variance with previous results reporting that IDPs are widespread also in cardiovascular and neurodegenerative pathologies. Overall, the operational separation of IDPRs from IDPs is relevant towards correct estimates of the occurrence of intrinsically disordered proteins in genome-wide studies and in the understanding of the functional spectra associated to different flavors of protein disorder.


Author(s):  
Stefano Gianni ◽  
Per Jemth

Abstract Intrinsically disordered protein regions may fold upon binding to an interaction partner. It is often argued that such coupled binding and folding enables the combination of high specificity with low affinity. The basic tenet is that an unfavorable folding equilibrium will make the overall binding weaker while maintaining the interaction interface. While theoretically solid, we argue that this concept may be misleading for intrinsically disordered proteins. In fact, experimental evidence suggests that interactions of disordered regions usually involve extended conformations. In such cases, the disordered region is exceptionally unlikely to fold into a bound conformation in the absence of its binding partner. Instead, these disordered regions can bind to their partners in multiple different conformations and then fold into the native bound complex, thus, if anything, increasing the affinity through folding. We concede that (de)stabilization of native structural elements such as helices will modulate affinity, but this could work both ways, decreasing or increasing the stability of the complex. Moreover, experimental data show that intrinsically disordered binding regions display a range of affinities and specificities dictated by the particular side chains and length of the disordered region and not necessarily by the fact that they are disordered. We find it more likely that intrinsically disordered regions are common in protein–protein interactions because they increase the repertoire of binding partners, providing an accessible route to evolve interactions rather than providing a stability–affinity trade-off.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Rhine ◽  
Velinda Vidaurre ◽  
Sua Myong

Liquid–liquid phase separation is emerging as the universal mechanism by which membraneless cellular granules form. Despite many previous studies on condensation of intrinsically disordered proteins and low complexity domains, we lack understanding about the role of RNA, which is the essential component of all ribonucleoprotein (RNP) granules. RNA, as an anionic polymer, is inherently an excellent platform for achieving multivalency and can accommodate many RNA binding proteins. Recent findings have highlighted the diverse function of RNA in tuning phase-separation propensity up or down, altering viscoelastic properties and thereby driving immiscibility between different condensates. In addition to contributing to the biophysical properties of droplets, RNA is a functionally critical constituent that defines the identity of cellular condensates and controls the temporal and spatial distribution of specific RNP granules. In this review, we summarize what we have learned so far about such roles of RNA in the context of in vitro and in vivo studies.


F1000Research ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 230
Author(s):  
Mauricio Oberti ◽  
Iosif Vaisman

Intrinsically disordered proteins or intrinsically disordered regions (IDR) are segments within a protein chain lacking a stable three-dimensional structure under normal physiological conditions. Accurate prediction of IDRs is challenging due to their genome wide occurrence and low ratio of disordered residues, making them a difficult target for traditional classification techniques. Existing computational methods mostly rely on sequence profiles to improve accuracy, which is time consuming and computationally expensive. The shiny-pred application is an ab initio sequence-only disorder predictor implemented in R/Shiny language. In order to make predictions, it uses convolutional neural network models, trained using PDB sequence data. It can be installed on any operating system on which R can be installed and run locally. A public version of the web application can be accessed at https://gmu-binf.shinyapps.io/shiny-pred


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roshan Mammen Regy ◽  
Gregory L. Dignon ◽  
Wenwei Zheng ◽  
Young Chan Kim ◽  
Jeetain Mittal

ABSTRACTRibonucleoprotein (RNP) granules are membraneless organelles (MLOs) which majorly consist of RNA and RNA-binding proteins and are formed via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). Experimental studies investigating the drivers of LLPS have shown that intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and nucleic acids like RNA play a key role in modulating protein phase separation. There is currently a dearth of modelling techniques which allow one to delve deeper into how RNA plays its role as a modulator/promoter of LLPS in cells using computational methods. Here we present a coarse-grained RNA model developed to fill this gap, which together with our recently developed HPS model for protein LLPS, allows us to capture the factors driving RNA-protein co-phase separation. We explore the capabilities of the modelling framework with the LAF-1 RGG/RNA system which has been well studied in experiments and also with the HPS model previously. Further taking advantage of the fact that the HPS model maintains sequence specificity we explore the role of charge patterning on controlling RNA incorporation into condensates. With increased charge patterning we observe formation of structured or patterned condensates which suggests the possible roles of RNA in not only shifting the phase boundaries but also introducing microscopic organization in MLOs.


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