Ubiquitylation of terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase inhibits its activity.

Terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase (TdT), which template-independently synthesizes DNA during V(D)J recombination in lymphoid cells, is ubiquitylated by a BPOZ-2/Cul3 complex, as the ubiquitin ligase, and then degraded by the 26 S proteasome. We show here that TdT is ubiquitylated by the Cul3-based ubiquitylation system in vitro. Because TdT could also be ubiquitylated in the absence of Cul/BPOZ-2, we determined that it could also be directly ubiquitylated by the E2 proteins UbcH5a/b/c and UbcH6, E3-independently. Furthermore, the ubiquitylated TdT inhibited its nucleotidyltransferase activity.