Structural basis for methylarginine-dependent recognition of Aubergine by Tudor

Haiping Liu; Ju-Yu S. Wang; Ying Huang; Zhizhong Li; Weimin Gong; Ruth Lehmann; Rui-Ming Xu

doi:10.1101/gad.1956010

Structural basis for methylarginine-dependent recognition of Aubergine by Tudor

¹National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China;
²Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, People's Republic of China;
³The Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Center for Biology and Medicine, Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, USA;
⁴Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, USA;
⁵Department of Cell Biology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, USA

↵7 Present address: Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, People's Republic of China.

↵6 These authors contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Piwi proteins are modified by symmetric dimethylation of arginine (sDMA), and the methylarginine-dependent interaction with Tudor domain proteins is critical for their functions in germline development. Cocrystal structures of an extended Tudor domain (eTud) of Drosophila Tudor with methylated peptides of Aubergine, a Piwi family protein, reveal that sDMA is recognized by an asparagine-gated aromatic cage. Furthermore, the unexpected Tudor-SN/p100 fold of eTud is important for sensing the position of sDMA. The structural information provides mechanistic insights into sDMA-dependent Piwi–Tudor interaction, and the recognition of sDMA by Tudor domains in general.

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Footnotes

↵8 Corresponding authors.

E-MAIL rmxu{at}sun5.ibp.ac.cn; FAX 86-10-648888023.
↵9 E-MAIL lehmann{at}saturn.med.nyu.edu; FAX (212) 263-0614.
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1956010.
Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.