The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Science and the Wolfson Center for Applied Structural Biology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
Plant Cell. 2012 May;24(5):2139-54. doi: 10.1105/tpc.112.097634. Epub 2012 May 4.
The NEET family is a newly discovered group of proteins involved in a diverse array of biological processes, including autophagy, apoptosis, aging, diabetes, and reactive oxygen homeostasis. They form a novel structure, the NEET fold, in which two protomers intertwine to form a two-domain motif, a cap, and a unique redox-active labile 2Fe-2S cluster binding domain. To accelerate the functional study of NEET proteins, as well as to examine whether they have an evolutionarily conserved role, we identified and characterized a plant NEET protein. Here, we show that the Arabidopsis thaliana At5g51720 protein (At-NEET) displays biochemical, structural, and biophysical characteristics of a NEET protein. Phenotypic characterization of At-NEET revealed a key role for this protein in plant development, senescence, reactive oxygen homeostasis, and Fe metabolism. A role in Fe metabolism was further supported by biochemical and cell biology studies of At-NEET in plant and mammalian cells, as well as mutational analysis of its cluster binding domain. Our findings support the hypothesis that NEET proteins have an ancient role in cells associated with Fe metabolism.
NEET 家族是一组新发现的蛋白质，参与多种生物学过程，包括自噬、细胞凋亡、衰老、糖尿病和活性氧稳态。它们形成了一种新的结构，即 NEET 折叠，其中两个原体相互交织形成两个结构域基序、一个帽和一个独特的氧化还原活性不稳定的 2Fe-2S 簇结合结构域。为了加速 NEET 蛋白的功能研究，并研究它们是否具有进化保守的作用，我们鉴定和表征了一种植物 NEET 蛋白。在这里，我们表明拟南芥 At5g51720 蛋白（At-NEET）表现出 NEET 蛋白的生化、结构和生物物理特征。At-NEET 的表型特征表明该蛋白在植物发育、衰老、活性氧稳态和 Fe 代谢中发挥关键作用。在植物和哺乳动物细胞中对 At-NEET 的生化和细胞生物学研究以及对其簇结合结构域的突变分析进一步支持了 Fe 代谢中的作用。我们的研究结果支持了这样的假设，即 NEET 蛋白在与 Fe 代谢相关的细胞中具有古老的作用。
