The carboxy-terminal domain of Erb1 is a seven-bladed ß-propeller that binds RNA

PLoS One. 2015 Apr 16;10(4):e0123463. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0123463. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Erb1 (Eukaryotic Ribosome Biogenesis 1) protein is essential for the maturation of the ribosomal 60S subunit. Functional studies in yeast and mammalian cells showed that altogether with Nop7 and Ytm1 it forms a stable subcomplex called PeBoW that is crucial for a correct rRNA processing. The exact function of the protein within the process remains unknown. The N-terminal region of the protein includes a well conserved region shown to be involved in PeBoW complex formation whereas the carboxy-terminal half was predicted to contain seven WD40 repeats. This first structural report on Erb1 from yeast describes the architecture of a seven-bladed β-propeller domain that revealed a characteristic extra motif formed by two α-helices and a β-strand that insert within the second WD repeat. We performed analysis of molecular surface and crystal packing, together with multiple sequence alignment and comparison of the structure with other β-propellers, in order to identify areas that are more likely to mediate protein-protein interactions. The abundance of many positively charged residues on the surface of the domain led us to investigate whether the propeller of Erb1 might be involved in RNA binding. Three independent assays confirmed that the protein interacted in vitro with polyuridilic acid (polyU), thus suggesting a possible role of the domain in rRNA rearrangement during ribosome biogenesis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Circular Dichroism
  • Crystallography, X-Ray
  • Evolution, Molecular
  • Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
  • Models, Molecular
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Poly U / chemistry
  • Poly U / metabolism
  • Protein Conformation
  • Protein Structure, Tertiary
  • RNA / chemistry
  • RNA / metabolism*
  • Ribosomal Proteins / chemistry*
  • Ribosomal Proteins / genetics
  • Ribosomal Proteins / metabolism*
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / chemistry*
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / genetics
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / metabolism*

Substances

  • Erb1 protein, S cerevisiae
  • Ribosomal Proteins
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins
  • Poly U
  • RNA

Associated data

  • PDB/4U7A

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the European Community, Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under BioStruct-X (grant agreement N°283570) to JB; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, SAF2012-31405 to JB and CSD2008-00005 and CTQ2013-4493 to JLN; and Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEO/2012/061 (JB) and 2013/018 (JLN). MW received a JAE-PREDOC fellowship from Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.