The intermediate filament protein consensus motif of helix 2B: its atomic structure and contribution to assembly

• Published in: Journal of molecular biology Vol. 298; no. 5; pp. 817 - 832
• Main Authors: Herrmann, Harald, Strelkov, Sergei V, Feja, Bernhard, Rogers, Kevin R, Brettel, Monika, Lustig, Ariel, Häner, Markus, Parry, David A.D, Steinert, Peter M, Burkhard, Peter, Aebi, Ueli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 19.05.2000
• Subjects: Amino Acid Motifs; Amino Acid Sequence; Animals; assembly; atomic structure; Consensus Sequence; Crystallography, X-Ray; desmin; Desmin - chemistry; Desmin - metabolism; Desmin - ultrastructure; Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; intermediate filament protein; Intermediate Filament Proteins - chemistry; Intermediate Filament Proteins - metabolism; Intermediate Filament Proteins - ultrastructure; Mice; Microscopy, Electron, Scanning Transmission; Models, Molecular; Molecular Sequence Data; Molecular Weight; Osmolar Concentration; Peptide Fragments - chemistry; Peptide Fragments - metabolism; Peptide Fragments - ultrastructure; Protein Binding; Protein Structure, Secondary; Protein Structure, Tertiary; Recombinant Fusion Proteins - chemistry; Recombinant Fusion Proteins - metabolism; Recombinant Fusion Proteins - ultrastructure; Sequence Alignment; Ultracentrifugation; vimentin; Vimentin - chemistry; Vimentin - metabolism; Vimentin - ultrastructure; Viscosity; Xenopus laevis; atomic structure; CK; MPL; desmin; vimentin; ULF; GFAP; STEM; intermediate filament protein; assembly; IF; wt; CAPS
• ISSN: 0022-2836; 1089-8638
• DOI: 10.1006/jmbi.2000.3719

Nearly all intermediate filament proteins exhibit a highly conserved amino acid motif (YRKLLEGEE) at the C-terminal end of their central α-helical rod domain. We have analyzed its contribution to the various stages of assembly by using truncated forms of Xenopus vimentin and mouse desmin, VimIAT and DesIAT, which terminate exactly before this motif, by comparing them with the wild-type and tailless proteins. It is surprising that in buffers of low ionic strength and high pH where the full-length proteins form tetramers, both VimIAT and DesIAT associated into various high molecular weight complexes. After initiation of assembly, both VimIAT and DesIAT aggregated into unit-length-type filaments, which rapidly longitudinally annealed to yield filaments of around 20 nm in diameter. Mass measurements by scanning transmission electron microscopy revealed that both VimIAT and DesIAT filaments contained considerably more subunits per cross-section than standard intermediate filaments. This indicated that the YRKLLEGEE-motif is crucial for the formation of authentic tetrameric complexes and also for the control of filament width, rather than elongation, during assembly. To determine the structure of the YRKLLEGEE domain, we grew crystals of peptides containing the last 28 amino acid residues of coil 2B, chimerically fused at its amino-terminal end to the 31 amino acid-long leucine zipper domain of the yeast transcription factor GCN4 to facilitate appropriate coiled-coil formation. The atomic structure shows that starting from Tyr400 the two helices gradually separate and that the coiled coil terminates with residue Glu405 while the downstream residues fold away from the coiled-coil axis.