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Copyright © 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA Plant Biology Derepression of the NC80 motif is critical for the photoactivation of Arabidopsis CRY2 *Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095; and †Bioenergy and Biomaterial Research Center, Hunan University, Changsha 410128, China §To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: clin/at/mcdb.ucla.edu Communicated by Bernard Phinney, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, March 8, 2007. Author contributions: X.Y., D.S., and X.L. contributed equally to this work; C.L. designed research; X.Y., D.S., M.M., H.Y., J.L., X.Z., and K.T.B. performed research; X.L. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.K. analyzed data; and C.L. wrote the paper. ‡Present address: Department of Plant Physiology, College of Agriculture, Vellayani, Thiruvananthapuram 695, India. Received December 13, 2006. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.Abstract Cryptochromes are blue light receptors that regulate photomorphogenesis in plants and the circadian clock in animals and plants. Arabidopsis cryptochrome 2 (CRY2) mediates blue light inhibition of hypocotyl elongation and photoperiodic control of floral initiation. CRY2 undergoes blue light-induced phosphorylation, which was hypothesized to be associated with CRY2 photoactivation. To further investigate how light activates CRY2, we analyzed the physiological activities and phosphorylation of various CRY2 fusion proteins in transgenic plants. Our results showed that an 80-residue motif, referred to as NC80, was sufficient to confer the physiological function of CRY2. The GUS-NC80 fusion protein expressed in transgenic plants is constitutively active but unphosphorylated, suggesting that the blue light-induced CRY2 phosphorylation causes a conformational change to derepress the NC80 motif. Consistent with this hypothesis, the CRY2 C-terminal tail was found to be required for the blue light-induced CRY2 phosphorylation but not for the CRY2 activity. We propose that the PHR domain and the C-terminal tail of the unphosphorylated CRY2 form a “closed” conformation to suppress the NC80 motif in the absence of light. In response to blue light, the C-terminal tail of CRY2 is phosphorylated and electrostatically repelled from the surface of the PHR domain to form an “open” conformation, resulting in derepression of the NC80 motif and signal transduction to trigger photomorphogenic responses. Keywords: blue light, cryptochrome Cryptochromes are photolyase-like photoreceptors that mediate blue light regulation of development and the circadian clock (1–3). Arabidopsis cryptochrome 1 (CRY1) and cryptochrome 2 (CRY2) mediate primarily blue light inhibition of hypocotyl elongation and photoperiodic promotion of floral initiation, respectively (4, 5). CRY1 and CRY2 also have overlapping functions, because the cry1 mutant shows delayed flowering time under certain light or temperature conditions (6, 7), whereas the cry2 mutant exhibits reduced inhibition of hypocotyl elongation under low fluence rates of blue light (8). The molecular mechanisms underlying photoactivation of cryptochromes remain poorly understood, although it has been proposed that blue light activates cryptochromes in plants by changing their redox status, protein phosphorylation, and/or conformation to activate the photoreceptors (9–12). Cryptochromes possess two domains, the N-terminal PHR (photolyase related) domain of ≈500 residues and a C-terminal extension of various lengths (2, 13). The PHR domain shares sequence similarity to photolyases, and it acts as the chromophore-binding domain that noncovalently binds flavin and pterin (14, 15). In addition, PHR is also involved in intra- and intermolecular protein–protein interactions (16–20). The C-terminal domain of cryptochrome is involved in functions such as nuclear localization, protein stability, posttranslational modification, and protein–protein interactions (1–3). Photoreceptors are commonly known to undergo light-induced conformational changes (21), but how cryptochromes change their conformation in response to light remains unclear. Based on a study of GUS-CCT fusion proteins, which contain the reporter enzyme GUS (β-glucuronidase) and the C-terminal domain of Arabidopsis CRY1 or CRY2, it has been proposed that the C-terminal domain of Arabidopsis cryptochromes acts as the effector domain for the photoreceptor in mediating physiological responses (9). Transgenic plants expressing GUS-CCT1 or GUS-CCT2 showed constitutive photomorphogenic phenotypes such as suppressed hypocotyl elongation and expanded cotyledons, resembling the phenotype of the cop (constitutive photomorphogenic) or det (deetiolated) mutants (22, 23). It was proposed that the C-terminal domain of Arabidopsis cryptochromes interacts with the E3 ubiquitin ligase COP1 to trigger light signal transduction (24, 25). It has also been recently shown that the PHR domain of CRY1 can interact with not only the C-terminal domain of CRY1 intramolecularly but also the PHR domain of CRY1 intermolecularly (20, 26). Moreover, the intramolecular interaction between the two domains of CRY1 may be altered by a light-dependent conformation change (26). These results provide compelling evidence supporting a blue light-dependent conformation change in Arabidopsis CRY1. Arabidopsis CRY1 and CRY2 undergo blue light-induced phosphorylation, which was proposed to be associated with photoactivation of the photoreceptors (10, 27, 28). Mammalian cryptochromes are also phosphoproteins, although it remains unclear whether light regulates phosphorylation of mammalian cryptochromes (29–31). In contrast to the plant cryptochromes, phosphorylation has been proposed to cause inactivation of animal cryptochromes (29). It was reported, based on a site-specific mutagenesis study, that phosphorylation of a single serine residue in the PHR domain was sufficient to inactivate mammalian cryptochromes (29). Because phosphorylation of Arabidopsis cryptochromes involves multiple serine residues, whereas a site-specific mutagenesis study has yielded no definitive conclusion concerning the role of phosphorylation (X.Y. and C.L., unpublished work), we sought a different approach to investigate the role of CRY2 phosphorylation. We report here a study of the structure–function relationship of Arabidopsis CRY2. Based on the analyses of the linear structures, physiological activities, and phosphorylation of different fusion proteins expressed in transgenic plants, we propose that blue light-induced phosphorylation of CRY2 causes a conformational change to derepress an 80-residue region located between the N-terminal PHR domain and the C-terminal tail of CRY2 and activation of the photoreceptor. Results To systematically examine the relationship of the primary structure, physiological activity, and phosphorylation of CRY2, we prepared transgenic Arabidopsis lines expressing fusion proteins of GFP or GUS fused to various fragments of Arabidopsis CRY2 in the cryptochrome mutant background (32). The cry1cry2 mutant exhibits a long hypocotyl when grown in blue light and delayed flowering when grown in long-day photoperiods (32). A fusion protein that rescues either phenotypic defect of the cry1cry2 parent is regarded as physiologically active. Fig. 1
The C-Terminal Tail of CRY2 Is Dispensable for the Two Major Physiological Activities of the Photoreceptor. Promotion of floral initiation and inhibition of hypocotyl elongation are the two major physiological activities of CRY2. Fig. 2
The GFP-CRY2, GFP-N563, and GFP-N580 fusion proteins also rescued the late-flowering phenotype of the cry1cry2 parent grown in long-day photoperiods, and they do not seem to affect the flowering time in plants grown in short-day photoperiods (Fig. 2 Homodimerization of CRY2 Is Important for CRY2 Function. Another unexpected result of our experiment was that GFP-CCT2 is physiologically inactive, because it failed to rescue the cry1cry2 mutant (Fig. 2
We next examined whether dimerization is an intrinsic property of the full-length CRY2, using the yeast two-hybrid assay and coimmunoprecipitation (co-IP) assays. The result of the yeast two-hybrid assay showed that CRY2 forms homodimers in yeast cells (Fig. 3 The intermolecular interaction between CRY2 proteins appears relatively weak or transient, because no significant amount of the CRY2 dimer was detected by gel filtration, glycerol gradient centrifugation, or native gel electrophoresis experiments (H.Y. and C.L., unpublished work). CRY1 was also reported to form homodimers by weak interactions; the physical association of the endogenous CRY1 to the epitope-tagged Myc-CRY1 was detected only after formaldehyde cross-link treatment (20). The PHR domain of CRY2 is most likely the dimerization domain, because GFP-CCT2 showed no dimerization (Fig. 3 The NC80 Motif of CRY2 Has Light-Independent Physiological Activities. It is intriguing that GFP-N563, which contains a deletion of the C-terminal tail of CRY2, and GUS-CCT2, which contains a deletion of the N-terminal PHR domain of CRY2, are both physiologically active in vivo (Figs. 1 Transgenic plants expressing GUS-NC80 developed hypocotyls significantly shorter than those of the cry1cry2 parent grown in not only blue light but also red light, far-red light, and in the dark (Fig. 2 Blue Light-Induced Phosphorylation of CRY2 Contributes to the Conformational Change Derepressing NC80. We have previously proposed that blue light-induced phosphorylation is associated with blue light-dependent activation of cryptochromes in plants (10, 27). However, cryptochrome phosphorylation might also cause desensitization or inactivation, as was reported for mammalian cryptochromes (29). To investigate this question, we analyzed the phosphorylation of CRY2 fusion proteins examined in this report (Fig. 4
No phosphorylation was detected for the GUS-NC80 fusion protein (Fig. 4 Discussion As summarized in Table 1, the CRY2 fusion proteins examined in this study can be grouped into three categories: (i) those that are phosphorylated and active only in response to blue light (GFP-CRY2, GFP-N563, and GFP-N580), (ii) constitutively phosphorylated and constitutively active (GUS-CCT2), and (iii) unphosphorylated but constitutively active (GUS-NC80). Taking into account the sequence differences among all of the CRY2 fusion proteins examined, these results can be collectively explained by the hypothesis that the blue light-dependent phosphorylation of the CRY2 holoprotein causes a conformational change to derepress the NC80 motif. The crystal structure of the PHR domain of Arabidopsis CRY1 (CRY1-PHR) has been recently solved (38). The PHR domain of Arabidopsis CRY1 and Escherichia coli DNA photolyase (≈30% identical) have similar structural folds that are almost superimposable (38, 39). However, DNA photolyase and CRY1-PHR have quite different surface features despite their similar structural fold. For example, photolyases, but not CRY1-PHR, have a positively charged groove near the FAD-access cavity. This difference is consistent with the fact that DNA photolyase binds and repairs its DNA substrate in this groove (2, 39), whereas CRY1 lacks DNA-repairing activity (14, 15). More importantly, CRY1-PHR contains an overall negative electrostatic potential on the surface where the C-terminal domain is most likely to interface, whereas the corresponding surface areas of photolyase are either positively charged or uncharged (38). Computational modeling shows that CRY2-PHR and CRY1-PHR (≈60% identical) have very similar structures (13) (J.K. and C.L., unpublished work). Provided a similar negative surface potential of the CRY2-PHR domain, the phosphorylated C-terminal tail of CRY2 would be electrostatically repelled from its surface. The separation of the CRY2 C-terminal tail from the PHR domain would increase the solvent accessibility of the NC80 motif to cause derepression of the photoreceptor. Taken together the above analysis, our results described in this report, and work from others support a hypothesis of how a cryptochrome may respond to light. According to this model (Fig. 4 Materials and Methods Plant Materials. All Arabidopsis lines studied in this report are derived from accession Col-4 (10, 32). Transgenic plants expressing CRY2 fusion proteins were prepared in the cry1, cry2, or cry1cry2 mutant background (5, 8, 32), which showed similar phenotypes, although only those in the cry1cry2 background are shown. The holocryptochrome and apocryptochrome have been referred to as cry and CRY, respectively (8), but we used CRY to represent both holocryptochrome and apocryptochrome in this report because of the difficulty to unambiguously distinguish the two in our discussion. Additional information for the preparation of transgenic lines and experimental light conditions can be found in SI Methods. Protein Analyses. Immunoblot, immunoprecipitation, and in planta32P labeling were as described (10, 27) with minor modifications. A commercial yeast two-hybrid (40, 41) system was used to test cryptochrome interactions. Additional details about protein analyses can be found in SI Methods. Supporting Information
Acknowledgments We thank Yana Bernatavichute and Dr. Steve Jacobsen for assistance with the immunofluorescence microscopy study, Drs. D. Ehrhardt and Z. Wang (Carnegie Institute, Stanford, CA) for the pEGAD vector and anti-GFP antibody, respectively. This work is supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grant GM56265 (to C.L.), the Changjiang scholarship (to C.L.), and the 985 higher-education enhancement fund (to Hunan University). J.K., J.L., and K.T.B. were partially supported by predoctoral University of California, Los Angeles-National Science Foundation/Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Bioinformatics Training Award DGE-9987641, the University of California Mexico–U.S. (MEXUS)–El Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y TecnologÍa (CONACYT) Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Better Opportunities for Young Scientists in Chosen Areas of Science and Technology (BOYSCAST) Award from India, respectively. Footnotes The authors declare no conflict of interest. This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0701912104/DC1. References 1. Cashmore AR. Cell. 2003;114:537–543. [PubMed] 2. Sancar A. Chem Rev. 2003;103:2203–2237. [PubMed] 3. Lin C, Todo T. Genome Biol. 2005;6:220. [PubMed] 4. Ahmad M, Cashmore AR. Nature. 1993;366:162–166. [PubMed] 5. Guo H, Yang H, Mockler TC, Lin C. Science. 1998;279:1360–1363. [PubMed] 6. Blazquez MA, Ahn JH, Weigel D. Nat Genet. 2003;33:168–171. [PubMed] 7. Bagnall DJ, King RW, Hangarter RP. Planta. 1996;200:278–280. [PubMed] 8. Lin C, Yang H, Guo H, Mockler T, Chen J, Cashmore AR. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1998;95:2686–2690. [PubMed] 9. Yang H-Q, Wu Y-J, Tang R-H, Liu D, Liu Y, Cashmore AR. Cell. 2000;103:815–827. [PubMed] 10. Shalitin D, Yang H, Mockler TC, Maymon M, Guo H, Whitelam GC, Lin C. Nature. 2002;417:763–767. [PubMed] 11. Giovani B, Byrdin M, Ahmad M, Brettel K. Nat Struct Biol. 2003;10:489–490. [PubMed] 12. Partch CL, Sancar A. Photochem Photobiol. 2005;81:1291–1304. [PubMed] 13. Lin C, Shalitin D. Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2003;54:469–496. [PubMed] 14. Lin C, Robertson DE, Ahmad M, Raibekas AA, Jorns MS, Dutton PL, Cashmore AR. Science. 1995;269:968–970. [PubMed] 15. Malhotra K, Kim ST, Batschauer A, Dawut L, Sancar A. Biochemistry. 1995;34:6892–6899. [PubMed] 16. Busza A, Emery-Le M, Rosbash M, Emery P. Science. 2004;304:1503–1506. [PubMed] 17. Chaves I, Yagita K, Barnhoorn S, Okamura H, van der Horst GT, Tamanini F. Mol Cell Biol. 2006;26:1743–1753. [PubMed] 18. Zhu H, Conte F, Green CB. Curr Biol. 2003;13:1653–1658. [PubMed] 19. Hirayama J, Nakamura H, Ishikawa T, Kobayashi Y, Todo T. J Biol Chem. 2003;278:35620–35628. [PubMed] 20. Sang Y, Li QH, Rubio V, Zhang YC, Mao J, Deng XW, Yang HQ. Plant Cell. 2005;17:1569–1584. [PubMed] 21. Holmes MG. In: Photoreceptor Evolution and Function. Holmes MG, editor. London: Academic; 1991. pp. 1–20. 22. Chory J, Peto C, Feinbaum R, Pratt L, Ausubel F. Cell. 1989;58:991–999. [PubMed] 23. Deng X-W, Matsui M, Wei N, Wagner D, Chu AM, Feldmann KA, Quail PH. Cell. 1992;71:791–801. [PubMed] 24. Wang H, Ma LG, Li JM, Zhao HY, Deng XW. Science. 2001;294:154–158. [PubMed] 25. Yang HQ, Tang RH, Cashmore AR. Plant Cell. 2001;13:2573–2587. [PubMed] 26. Partch CL, Clarkson MW, Ozgur S, Lee AL, Sancar A. Biochemistry. 2005;44:3795–3805. [PubMed] 27. Shalitin D, Yu X, Maymon M, Mockler T, Lin C. Plant Cell. 2003;15:2421–2429. [PubMed] 28. Bouly JP, Giovani B, Djamei A, Mueller M, Zeugner A, Dudkin EA, Batschauer A, Ahmad M. Eur J Biochem. 2003;270:2921–2928. [PubMed] 29. Sanada K, Harada Y, Sakai M, Todo T, Fukada Y. Genes Cells. 2004;9:697–708. [PubMed] 30. Eide EJ, Vielhaber EL, Hinz WA, Virshup DM. J Biol Chem. 2002;277:17248–17254. [PubMed] 31. Harada Y, Sakai M, Kurabayashi N, Hirota T, Fukada Y. J Biol Chem. 2005;280:31714–31721. [PubMed] 32. Mockler TC, Guo H, Yang H, Duong H, Lin C. Development (Cambridge, UK). 1999;126:2073–2082. 33. Yanovsky MJ, Kay SA. Nature. 2002;419:308–312. [PubMed] 34. Valverde F, Mouradov A, Soppe W, Ravenscroft D, Samach A, Coupland G. Science. 2004;303:1003–1006. [PubMed] 35. Kato A, Hayashi M, Nishimura M. Plant Cell Physiol. 1999;40:586–591. [PubMed] 36. Matsushita T, Mochizuki N, Nagatani A. Nature. 2003;424:571–574. [PubMed] 37. Guo H, Duong H, Ma N, Lin C. Plant J. 1999;19:279–287. [PubMed] 38. Brautigam CA, Smith BS, Ma Z, Palnitkar M, Tomchick DR, Machius M, Deisenhofer J. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2004;101:12142–12147. [PubMed] 39. Park HW, Kim ST, Sancar A, Deisenhofer J. Science. 1995;268:1866–1872. [PubMed] 40. Chien CT, Bartel PL, Sternglanz R, Fields S. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1991;88:9578–9582. [PubMed] 41. Wittmann S, Chatel H, Fortin MG, Laliberte JF. Virology. 1997;234:84–92. [PubMed] |
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[Cell. 2003]Chem Rev. 2003 Jun; 103(6):2203-37.
[Chem Rev. 2003]Genome Biol. 2005; 6(5):220.
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[Chem Rev. 2003]Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2003; 54():469-96.
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[Science. 2004]Cell. 2000 Nov 22; 103(5):815-27.
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[Science. 2001]Plant Cell. 2001 Dec; 13(12):2573-87.
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[Nature. 2002]Plant Cell. 2003 Oct; 15(10):2421-9.
[Plant Cell. 2003]Eur J Biochem. 2003 Jul; 270(14):2921-8.
[Eur J Biochem. 2003]Genes Cells. 2004 Aug; 9(8):697-708.
[Genes Cells. 2004]J Biol Chem. 2002 May 10; 277(19):17248-54.
[J Biol Chem. 2002]Cell. 2000 Nov 22; 103(5):815-27.
[Cell. 2000]Nature. 2002 Sep 19; 419(6904):308-12.
[Nature. 2002]Science. 2004 Feb 13; 303(5660):1003-6.
[Science. 2004]Cell. 2000 Nov 22; 103(5):815-27.
[Cell. 2000]Plant Cell Physiol. 1999 Jun; 40(6):586-91.
[Plant Cell Physiol. 1999]Nature. 2003 Jul 31; 424(6948):571-4.
[Nature. 2003]Plant Cell. 2005 May; 17(5):1569-84.
[Plant Cell. 2005]Plant J. 1999 Aug; 19(3):279-87.
[Plant J. 1999]Nature. 2002 Jun 13; 417(6890):763-7.
[Nature. 2002]Plant Cell. 2003 Oct; 15(10):2421-9.
[Plant Cell. 2003]Genes Cells. 2004 Aug; 9(8):697-708.
[Genes Cells. 2004]Eur J Biochem. 2003 Jul; 270(14):2921-8.
[Eur J Biochem. 2003]Cell. 2000 Nov 22; 103(5):815-27.
[Cell. 2000]Nature. 2002 Jun 13; 417(6890):763-7.
[Nature. 2002]Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Aug 17; 101(33):12142-7.
[Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004]Science. 1995 Jun 30; 268(5219):1866-72.
[Science. 1995]Chem Rev. 2003 Jun; 103(6):2203-37.
[Chem Rev. 2003]Science. 1995 Aug 18; 269(5226):968-70.
[Science. 1995]Biochemistry. 1995 May 23; 34(20):6892-9.
[Biochemistry. 1995]Science. 2001 Oct 5; 294(5540):154-8.
[Science. 2001]Plant Cell. 2001 Dec; 13(12):2573-87.
[Plant Cell. 2001]Nature. 2002 Jun 13; 417(6890):763-7.
[Nature. 2002]Science. 1998 Feb 27; 279(5355):1360-3.
[Science. 1998]Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998 Mar 3; 95(5):2686-90.
[Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998]Nature. 2002 Jun 13; 417(6890):763-7.
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