![]() | ![]() |
Formats:
|
||||||||||
Copyright © 2002 Aravind and Iyer, licensee BioMed Central Ltd The SWIRM domain: a conserved module found in chromosomal proteins points to novel chromatin-modifying activities 1National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA Correpondence: L Aravind. E-mail: aravind@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Corresponding author.L Aravind: aravind/at/ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Received April 2, 2002; Revised April 30, 2002; Accepted May 16, 2002. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.Abstract Background Eukaryotic chromosomal components, especially histones, are subject to a wide array of covalent modifications and catalytic reorganization. These modifications have an important role in the regulation of chromatin structure and are mediated by large multisubunit complexes that contain modular proteins with several conserved catalytic and noncatalytic adaptor domains. Results Using computational sequence-profile analysis methods, we identified a previously uncharacterized, predicted α-helical domain of about 85 residues in chromosomal proteins such as Swi3p, Rsc8p, Moira and several other uncharacterized proteins. This module, termed the SWIRM domain, is predicted to mediate specific protein-protein interactions in the assembly of chromatin-protein complexes. In one group of proteins, which are highly conserved throughout the crown-group eukaryotes, the SWIRM domain is linked to a catalytic domain related to the monoamine and polyamine oxidases. Another human protein has the SWIRM domain linked to a JAB domain that is involved in protein degradation through the ubiquitin pathway. Conclusions Identification of the SWIRM domain could help in directed experimental analysis of specific interactions in chromosomal proteins. We predict that the proteins in which it is combined with an amino-oxidase domain define a novel class of chromatin-modifying enzymes, which are likely to oxidize either the amino group of basic residues in histones and other chromosomal proteins or the polyamines in chromatin, and thereby alter the charge distribution. Other forms, such as KIAA1915, may link chromatin modification to ubiquitin-dependent protein degradation. Background The structure and dynamics of chromatin clearly differentiate the eukaryotes from the other superkingdoms of life [1,2]. Eukaryotic chromatin undergoes a variety of structural and compositional changes that accompany the progression of the cell cycle and changes in gene expression [3]. These dynamics are regulated both by a variety of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions and by catalytic modification and reorganization of proteins and nucleic acids that comprise the chromosomes [3]. In recent years it has become clear that covalent modification of histones, transcription factors and other chromosomal proteins plays a major part in the dynamics of chromatin. The covalent modifications include hydroxylation of proline and lysine, methylation of lysine and arginine, phosphorylation of serine and threonine, and acetylation and ubiquitination of lysine. Other enzymes, such as deacetylases and phosphatases, remove covalent modifications from proteins and thus reverse their effects [4,5,6]. The covalent modifications may change the local or global charge properties of chromosomal proteins and regulate their interactions with DNA. Additionally, the modifications also seem to form a 'code' that is recognized by specific groups of regulatory proteins [6,7,8]. Besides covalent modifications, ATP-dependent enzymes such as the Swi2/Snf2 ATPases and other chaperone-like proteins remodel the chromatin by rearranging the binding pattern of histones and other chromosomal proteins [9,10,11,12]. These covalent and non-covalent catalytic actions on the chromatin can result in condensation or decondensation of chromatin, either locally or on the chromosomal scale, and thereby regulate access of transcription factors and other proteins to the chromatin. Many of these chromatin-modifying activities are organized into large multisubunit complexes, with the core enzyme accompanied by several noncatalytic subunits [12]. The subunits of these complexes are characterized by a number of conserved domains that interact with other proteins or DNA. Most of these domains are evolutionarily mobile modules and combine with each other in a very wide range of domain architectures [13]. Well studied examples of these are the bromodomain that interacts with acetylated peptides [14,15,16], chromodomains that mediate specific interactions with proteins [17,18] and RNA [19,20], the PHD finger mediating protein-protein interactions [21], the Myb and SANT domains [22] that interact with both DNA and proteins [23], and the SAP and AT-hook domains that interact with DNA [24,25]. These domains often occur together in large proteins linked to catalytic domains and may serve to tether these proteins to different components of chromatin and deliver catalytic activities to specific locations. The computational analysis of chromatin proteins has helped in the identification of a large number of conserved modules in the chromosomal proteins [13]. These studies, followed by biochemical and structural characterization of these modules has thrown considerable light on the biology of chromatin dynamics and the roles these domains have played in course of evolution [14,15,16,20]. Using computational analysis, we have discovered a previously uncharacterized domain in multiple chromatin proteins. We also show that this domain is found linked to catalytic domains such as oxidoreductase and Jun activating binding protein 1 (JAB) domains and these proteins may define a novel class of chromatin-modifying enzymes. Results and discussion Identification of the SWIRM domain In the course of our systematic survey of eukaryotic chromosomal proteins, we observed a conserved globular module shared by the SWI3p and RSC8p proteins from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that did not map to any previously characterized domain. These homologous proteins are parts of the multisubunit SWI/SNF and RSC complexes that drive chromatin remodeling through the SNF2/SWI2-like ATPase subunit [26,27,28]. The region of similarity encompassing this segment has been termed 'conserved region 1' in [27]. Both these proteins additionally contain a Myb-related helix-turn-helix domain termed the SANT domain [22] at their carboxyl terminus and a further carboxy-terminal conserved α-helical extension restricted to orthologs of RSC8p and SWI3p. Given that these subunits are key components of the respective chromatin-remodeling complexes, and mediate multiple interactions, we sought to further investigate the provenance of their conserved amino-terminal module using computational methods. A PSI-BLAST search [29] initiated with this region from RSC8p (gi: 14318562, region 80-177) not only recovered its paralogs and orthologs from other organisms such as Moira from Drosophila [30] and BAF155 and BAF170 from vertebrates [27], but also several other uncharacterized proteins from diverse eukaryotes with statistically significant expected values (e-values) at the point of detection. For example, the search recovered the nuclear protein SPAC23E2.02 from Schizosaccharomyces pombe [31] in iteration 4 (e = 2 × 10-4), the human proteins KIAA1915 (e = 10-5) and KIAA0601 [32,33] (e = 10-7) in iteration 2 and the Arabidopsis thaliana protein At2g47620 in iteration 3 (e = 10-7). We prepared a multiple alignment of these regions from all the proteins detected in these searches (Figure (Figure1)1
The conserved region described above occurred in various distinct domain-architecture contexts, suggesting that it is an evolutionarily mobile domain (Figure (Figure2).2
Functional implications and domain architectures of the SWIRM domains Rsc8p (Swh3p) has been shown to mediate multiple interactions in the RSC complex: it undergoes dimerization via the carboxy-terminal coiled-coil segment, associates with the SWI2/SNF2 ATPase Sth1p by forming two distinct contacts, and it forms a complex with RSC6p subunit. Deletion analyses have shown that the region of the protein that includes the SWIRM domain is probably required for at least one of the contacts with Sth1p and perhaps even those with Rsc6p [39,40]. This suggests that the SWIRM domain is most likely to mediate protein-protein interactions. The Rsc8p- and SWI3p-related proteins have fairly complex architectures, implying that the different modules may mediate distinct interactions. Rsc8p has an additional ZZ domain [41] between the SWIRM and Myb domains, whereas the animal and Dictyostelium versions, like Moira, have an additional amino-terminal chromodomain (Figure (Figure2).2 A striking group of proteins with the SWIRM domain is the one typified by SPAC23E2.02 and SPBC146.09c from S. pombe. Between one and four orthologs of this protein are encoded by different crown-group eukaryotes (Figures (Figures11
It is also conceivable that the FAD cofactor of these enzymes functions analogously to NAD, in a deacetylation reaction of acetyllysines similar to that carried out by Sir2 enzymes [47]. Whereas both these enzymes are derived versions of the Rossmann fold and bind a dinucleotide cofactor, the SWIRM amino oxidase proteins do not possess equivalents of the unique inserts with residues that allow the SIR2-like proteins to catalyze the deacetylation reaction. On the contrary, the conserved residues in the SWIRM amino oxidases are the same as other amino oxidases, suggesting that they share similar catalytic activities, as proposed above. The combination with the SWIRM domain, which is predicted to be a protein-protein interaction module, suggests that these enzymes may be part of a larger complex, like other chromatin-modifying enzymes. Whereas in vertebrates KIAA0601 has been shown to interact with the histone-deacetylase-containing complexes [32,33], the presence of multiple proteins in this family could point to the formation of other distinct complexes. Interestingly, the SWIRM amino-oxidase-type proteins are absent in S. cerevisiae but present in S. pombe and other crown-group eukaryotes. Hence, it is likely to have been present in the ancestral crown-group eukaryote and secondarily lost in S. cerevisiae. We have shown previously that several functionally linked genes, encoding proteins involved in chromatin-structure dynamics, which are conserved in S. pombe and other crown-group eukaryotes, have been lost as a group in S. cerevisiae [43]. This implies that the SWIRM amino-oxidase-type proteins may be functionally linked to these other genes that were co-eliminated along with it in S. cerevisiae. These include genes for proteins such as the SET domain methyltransferase Clr4p, the chromodomain protein Swi6p, the PHD finger protein Mlo2p, the chromosomal actin-like protein SPAC23D3.09, and the predicted prolylhydroxylase with the double-stranded β-helix domain SPAC343.11c [43]. Some of these proteins may be part of a multiprotein chromatin-modifying catalytic complex of which the SWIRM amino oxidase proteins are a part. In vertebrates, the SWIRM domain is found fused along with a Myb (SANT) domain to a JAB1/PAD1 domain [48,49] (for example, in the human protein KIAA1915, Figure Figure2).2 Conclusions We define a conserved domain of about 85 residues, predicted to participate in protein-protein interactions, in different eukaryotic chromatin proteins such as Swi3p and Rsc8p. Homologs of these molecules, with the SWIRM domain, are found in all eukaryotes belonging to the crown group, as well as earlier-branching protists such as the apicomplexans. A version of the SWIRM domain is found linked to an amino-oxidase domain in a class of nuclear proteins that are represented in most crown-group eukaryotes. These proteins are present in multiple copies in plant proteomes and are entirely absent in the yeast S. cerevisiae. We predict that these proteins define a new class of chromatin-modifying enzymes that are likely to oxidize the amino groups of histones or other nuclear proteins. Alternatively, they may oxidize polyamines in chromatin to alter the charge balance in the chromatin. In humans the SWIRM domain is found linked to a JAB1/PAD1 catalytic domain, suggesting that this protein may serve as a link in the regulation of chromatinic proteins through proteasomal degradation. Materials and methods The nonredundant (NR) database of protein sequences (National Center for Biotechnology Information, NIH, Bethesda) was searched using the BLASTP program. Profile searches were carried out using the PSI-BLAST program [29] with either a single sequence or an alignment used as the query, with a profile inclusion expectation (E) value threshold of 0.01, and were iterated until convergence. Previously known conserved protein domains were detected using the corresponding PSI-BLAST-derived PSSMs [34]. The PSSMs were prepared by choosing one or more starting queries (seeds) for a set of most frequently encountered domains (see [34] for details) and run against the NR database until convergence with the -C option of PSI-BLAST to save the PSSM. It was ensured that at convergence no false positives were included in the profiles. This profile database can be downloaded from [51] or used on the Internet via the RPS-BLAST program [52]. All globular segments of proteins that did not map to domains with previously constructed PSSMs were searched individually using PSI-BLAST to detect any additional domains that may have been overlooked. Hidden Markov model-based searches were run using the HMMER2 package [35]. References
|
PubMed related articles
Your browsing activity is empty. Activity recording is turned off. |
|||||||||
Science. 1998 Apr 24; 280(5363):547-53.
[Science. 1998]EMBO J. 2000 Mar 15; 19(6):1176-9.
[EMBO J. 2000]Genome Biol. 2001; 2(4):REVIEWS0003.
[Genome Biol. 2001]Science. 2001 Aug 10; 293(5532):1074-80.
[Science. 2001]Nature. 2000 Jan 6; 403(6765):41-5.
[Nature. 2000]J Mol Biol. 1999 Oct 22; 293(2):187-98.
[J Mol Biol. 1999]Nature. 2001 Feb 15; 409(6822):860-921.
[Nature. 2001]Science. 2000 May 26; 288(5470):1422-5.
[Science. 2000]Nature. 2000 Mar 23; 404(6776):414-7.
[Nature. 2000]Nature. 1999 Jun 3; 399(6735):491-6.
[Nature. 1999]Nature. 2001 Feb 15; 409(6822):860-921.
[Nature. 2001]Science. 2000 May 26; 288(5470):1422-5.
[Science. 2000]Nature. 2000 Mar 23; 404(6776):414-7.
[Nature. 2000]Nature. 1999 Jun 3; 399(6735):491-6.
[Nature. 1999]Nature. 2000 Sep 21; 407(6802):405-9.
[Nature. 2000]Cell. 1996 Dec 27; 87(7):1249-60.
[Cell. 1996]Genes Dev. 1996 Sep 1; 10(17):2117-30.
[Genes Dev. 1996]Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1994 Apr 12; 91(8):2905-8.
[Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1994]Trends Biochem Sci. 1996 Mar; 21(3):87-8.
[Trends Biochem Sci. 1996]Nucleic Acids Res. 1997 Sep 1; 25(17):3389-402.
[Nucleic Acids Res. 1997]Nature. 1999 Jun 3; 399(6735):491-6.
[Nature. 1999]Trends Biochem Sci. 1996 Mar; 21(3):87-8.
[Trends Biochem Sci. 1996]Mol Cell Biol. 1997 Apr; 17(4):1768-75.
[Mol Cell Biol. 1997]Nucleic Acids Res. 1998 Aug 15; 26(16):3739-45.
[Nucleic Acids Res. 1998]Trends Biochem Sci. 1996 Jan; 21(1):11-13.
[Trends Biochem Sci. 1996]Chromosoma. 2000; 109(1-2):62-71.
[Chromosoma. 2000]Trends Biochem Sci. 1998 Aug; 23(8):284-6.
[Trends Biochem Sci. 1998]Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Oct 10; 97(21):11319-24.
[Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000]J Biol Chem. 2001 Mar 2; 276(9):6817-24.
[J Biol Chem. 2001]Neuron. 2001 Aug 16; 31(3):353-65.
[Neuron. 2001]Genes Cells. 2000 Mar; 5(3):169-90.
[Genes Cells. 2000]Nucleic Acids Res. 1995 May 11; 23(9):1604-13.
[Nucleic Acids Res. 1995]Biochemistry. 2001 Dec 25; 40(51):15456-63.
[Biochemistry. 2001]J Biol Chem. 2001 Mar 2; 276(9):6817-24.
[J Biol Chem. 2001]Neuron. 2001 Aug 16; 31(3):353-65.
[Neuron. 2001]Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Oct 10; 97(21):11319-24.
[Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000]Protein Sci. 1998 May; 7(5):1250-4.
[Protein Sci. 1998]Trends Biochem Sci. 1998 Jun; 23(6):204-5.
[Trends Biochem Sci. 1998]Trends Plant Sci. 2001 Aug; 6(8):379-86.
[Trends Plant Sci. 2001]Nucleic Acids Res. 1997 Sep 1; 25(17):3389-402.
[Nucleic Acids Res. 1997]Bioinformatics. 1999 Dec; 15(12):1000-11.
[Bioinformatics. 1999]Bioinformatics. 1998; 14(9):755-63.
[Bioinformatics. 1998]J Mol Biol. 2000 Sep 8; 302(1):205-17.
[J Mol Biol. 2000]Bioinformatics. 1998; 14(10):892-3.
[Bioinformatics. 1998]