tuning-degradation-to-achieve-specific-and-efficient-protein-depletion

Tuning Degradation to Achieve Specific and Efficient Protein Depletion

The plant auxin binding receptor, TIR1, recognizes proteins containing a specific auxin-inducible degron (AID) motif in the presence of auxin, targeting ...

University of Edinburgh

In arid and semi-arid environments, drought and soil salinity usually occur at the beginning and end of a plant's life cycle, offering a natural opportunity for the priming of young plants to enhance stress tolerance in mature plants. Chromatin marks, such as histone modifications, provide a potential molecular mechanism for priming plants to environmental stresses, but whether transient exposure of seedlings to hyperosmotic stress leads to chromatin changes that are maintained throughout vegetative growth remains unclear.

Hyperosmotic priming of Arabidopsis seedlings establishes a long-term somatic memory accompanied by specific changes of the epigenome.

The auxin-inducible degron (AID) is a useful technique to rapidly deplete proteins of interest in nonplant eukaryotes. Depletion is achieved by addition of the plant hormone auxin to the cell culture, which allows the auxin-binding receptor, TIR1, to target the AID-tagged protein for degradation by the proteasome. Fast depletion of the target protein requires good expression of TIR1 protein, but as we show here, high levels of TIR1 may cause uncontrolled depletion of the target protein in the absence of auxin. To enable conditional expression of TIR1 to a high level when required, we regulated the expression of TIR1 using the β-estradiol expression system. This is a fast-acting gene induction system that does not cause secondary effects on yeast cell metabolism. We demonstrate that combining the AID and β-estradiol systems results in a tightly controlled and fast auxin-induced depletion of nuclear target proteins. Moreover, we show that depletion rate can be tuned by modulating the duration of β-estradiol preincubation. We conclude that TIR1 protein is a rate-limiting factor for target protein depletion in yeast, and we provide new tools that allow tightly controlled, tuneable, and efficient depletion of essential proteins whereas minimising secondary effects.

Emanuela Sani

Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology,
School of Biological Sciences,
Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology, School of Biological Sciences

University of Edinburgh

Tuning Degradation to Achieve Specific and Efficient Protein Depletion

Emanuela Sani

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University of Edinburgh

Tuning Degradation to Achieve Specific and Efficient Protein Depletion

Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology,
School of Biological Sciences,
Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology, School of Biological Sciences