Structural Heterogeneity in the RNA Polymerase II C-Terminal Domain PDF Download

Author: Bede Portz
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Languages : en
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Book Description
RNA polymerase II contains a repetitive and intrinsically disordered C-Terminal Domain (CTD) composed of heptad repeats of the consensus sequence YSPTSPS. The CTD can be heavily phosphorylated and serves as a scaffold, interacting with factors involved in transcription initiation, elongation, termination, RNA processing and chromatin modification. Despite its role as a nexus of eukaryotic gene regulation, the structure of the CTD and the structural implications of CTD phosphorylation, are poorly understood. Additionally, there is an increasing awareness of the importance of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) that function without adopting a stably folded structure. Here I present a biophysical and biochemical interrogation of the structure of the full-length CTD of D. melanogaster, which I conclude is a compact random coil. I find that the repetitive CTD is structurally heterogeneous as evidenced by a discontinuous pattern of cutting in limited proteolysis assays. Small Angle X-Ray scattering (SAXS) is a method ideally suited for the structural interrogation of large IDPs and can be employed to measure the size of a protein and to monitor structural changes in response to post-translational modification. Using SAXS I determined that phosphorylation by the kinase P-TEFb caused an increase in CTD radius and stiffness. Limited proteolysis of the phosphorylated CTD showed these gross structural changes are accompanied by increased protease accessibility and an alteration in relative protease accessibility across the length of the CTD.Additionally, we show that the human CTD is also structurally heterogeneous and able to substitute for the Drosophila melanogaster CTD in supporting the development of flies to adulthood. These finding implicate conserved structural organization, not a precise array of heptad motifs, as important to CTD function.The CTD is attached to the catalytic core of Pol II via a linker. I show that this linker is more compact than the CTD repeats and serves as an independent structural unit. The phosphorylated linker-CTD remains flexible relative to the phosphorylated CTD alone. Together, these results support a mechanism by which phosphorylation reduces the conformational entropy of the CTD, generating a more binding competent dock for CTD:protein interactions, with the linker region maintaining the ability of CTD bound factors to sample the 3-dimensional space which may be required for RNA processing and histone modification.The data described herein represent the most thorough structural characterization to date of the full length CTD on the global and local scales, examining both the overall size and local structural organization of the CTD. These studies establish the Drosophila CTD as an attractive model for the biophysical, biochemical and genetic interrogation of the structure and function of the CTD from a developmentally complex organism.