Yablonski D, Marbach I, Levitzki A
Department of Biological Chemistry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat Ram, Israel.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Nov 26;93(24):13864-9. doi: 10.1073/pnas.93.24.13864.
The mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae pheromone response pathway is organized on the Ste5 protein, which binds each of the kinases of the cascade prior to signaling. In this study, a structure-function analysis of Ste5 deletion mutants uncovered new functional domains of the Ste5 protein and revealed that Ste5 dimerizes during the course of normal signal transduction. Dimerization, mediated by two regions in the N-terminal half of Ste5, was first suggested by intragenic complementation between pairs of nonfunctional Ste5 mutants and was confirmed by using the two-hybrid system. Coimmunoprecipitation of differently tagged forms of Ste5 from cells in which the pathway has been activated by Ste5 overexpression further confirmed dimerization. A precise correlation between the biological activity of various Ste5 fragments and dimerization suggests that dimerization is essential for Ste5 function.
酿酒酵母信息素反应途径的丝裂原活化蛋白激酶级联反应是在Ste5蛋白上组织起来的,在信号传导之前,Ste5蛋白会结合该级联反应的每一种激酶。在这项研究中,对Ste5缺失突变体的结构-功能分析揭示了Ste5蛋白的新功能结构域,并表明Ste5在正常信号转导过程中会发生二聚化。由Ste5 N端一半的两个区域介导的二聚化,最初是通过非功能性Ste5突变体对之间的基因内互补提出的,并通过双杂交系统得到证实。从通过Ste5过表达激活了该途径的细胞中对不同标记形式的Ste5进行共免疫沉淀,进一步证实了二聚化。各种Ste5片段的生物学活性与二聚化之间的精确相关性表明,二聚化对Ste5的功能至关重要。