Canonical cytosolic iron-sulfur cluster assembly and non-canonical functions of DRE2 in Arabidopsis

PLoS Genet. 2019 Apr 29;15(4):e1008094. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1008094. eCollection 2019 Apr.

Abstract

As a component of the Cytosolic Iron-sulfur cluster Assembly (CIA) pathway, DRE2 is essential in organisms from yeast to mammals. However, the roles of DRE2 remain incompletely understood largely due to the lack of viable dre2 mutants. In this study, we successfully created hypomorphic dre2 mutants using the CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Like other CIA pathway mutants, the dre2 mutants have accumulation of DNA lesions and show constitutive DNA damage response. In addition, the dre2 mutants exhibit DNA hypermethylation at hundreds of loci. The mutant forms of DRE2 in the dre2 mutants, which bear deletions in the linker region of DRE2, lost interaction with GRXS17 but have stronger interaction with NBP35, resulting in the CIA-related defects of dre2. Interestingly, we find that DRE2 is also involved in auxin response that may be independent of its CIA role. DRE2 localizes in both the cytoplasm and the nucleus and nuclear DRE2 associates with euchromatin. Furthermore, DRE2 directly associates with multiple auxin responsive genes and maintains their normal expression. Our study highlights the importance of the linker region of DRE2 in coordinating CIA-related protein interactions and identifies the canonical and non-canonical roles of DRE2 in maintaining genome stability, epigenomic patterns, and auxin response.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Alleles
  • Arabidopsis / genetics*
  • Arabidopsis / metabolism*
  • Arabidopsis Proteins / genetics*
  • Arabidopsis Proteins / metabolism*
  • CRISPR-Cas Systems
  • Cytosol / metabolism
  • DNA Damage
  • DNA Methylation
  • Indoleacetic Acids / metabolism
  • Iron / metabolism*
  • Iron-Sulfur Proteins / genetics*
  • Iron-Sulfur Proteins / metabolism*
  • Multigene Family
  • Mutation
  • Protein Interaction Mapping
  • Protein Interaction Maps
  • Sulfur / metabolism*

Substances

  • Arabidopsis Proteins
  • DRE2 protein, Arabidopsis
  • Indoleacetic Acids
  • Iron-Sulfur Proteins
  • Sulfur
  • Iron

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (grant no. 2016YFA0500800) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 31522005 and 31571326) to WQ. The funders did not involved in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.