Flexibility of the PDZ-binding motif in the micelle-bound form of Jagged-1 cytoplasmic tail

Human Jagged-1, one of the ligands of Notch receptors, is a transmembrane protein composed of a large extracellular region and a 125-residue cytoplasmic tail which bears a C-terminal PDZ recognition motif. To investigate the interaction between Jagged-1 cytoplasmic tail and the inner leaflet of the plasma membrane we determined, by solution NMR, the secondary structure and dynamics of the recombinant protein corresponding to the intracellular region of Jagged-1, J1_tmic, bound to negatively charged lysophospholipid micelles. NMR showed that the PDZ binding motif is preceded by four α-helical segments and that, despite the extensive interaction between J1_tmic and the micelle, the PDZ binding motif remains highly flexible. Binding of J1_tmic to negatively charged, but not to zwitterionic vesicles, was confirmed by surface plasmon resonance. To study the PDZ binding region in more detail, we prepared a peptide corresponding to the last 24 residues of Jagged-1, J1C24, and different phosphorylated variants of it. J1C24 displays a marked helical propensity and undergoes a coil-helix transition in the presence of negatively charged, but not zwitterionic, lysophospholipid micelles. Phosphorylation at different positions drastically decreases the helical propensity of the peptides and abolishes the coil-helix transition triggered by lysophospholipid micelles. We propose that phosphorylation of residues upstream of the PDZ binding motif may shift the equilibrium from an ordered, membrane-bound, interfacial form of Jagged-1 C-terminal region to a more disordered form with an increased accessibility of the PDZ recognition motif, thus playing an indirect role in the interaction between Jagged-1 and the PDZ-containing target protein.     

Contrasting Patterns of Genetic Differentiation among Blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) with Divergent Migratory Orientations in Europe

Migratory divides are thought to facilitate behavioral, ecological, and genetic divergence among populations with different migratory routes. However, it is currently contentious how much genetic divergence is needed to maintain distinct migratory behavior across migratory divides. Here we investigate patterns of neutral genetic differentiation among Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) populations with different migratory strategies across Europe. We compare the level of genetic divergence of populations migrating to southwestern (SW) or southeastern (SE) wintering areas with birds wintering in the British Isles following a recently established northwesterly (NW) migration route. The migratory divide between SW and SE wintering areas can be interpreted as a result of a re-colonization process after the last glaciation. Thus we predicted greater levels of genetic differentiation among the SW/SE populations. However, a lack of genetic differentiation was found between SW and SE populations, suggesting that interbreeding likely occurs among Blackcaps with different migratory orientations across a large area; therefore the SW/SE migratory divide can be seen as diffuse, broad band and is, at best, a weak isolating barrier. Conversely, weak, albeit significant genetic differentiation was evident between NW and SW migrants breeding sympatrically in southern Germany, suggesting a stronger isolating mechanism may be acting in this population. Populations located within/near the SW/SE contact zone were the least genetically divergent from NW migrants, confirming NW migrants likely originated from within the contact zone. Significant isolation-by-distance was found among eastern Blackcap populations (i.e. SE migrants), but not among western populations (i.e. NW and SW migrants), revealing different patterns of genetic divergence among Blackcap populations in Europe. We discuss possible explanations for the genetic structure of European Blackcaps and how gene flow influences the persistence of divergent migratory behaviors.     

A bipartite sequence motif induces translation reinitiation in feline calicivirus RNA

The mechanism leading to reinitiation of translation after termination of protein synthesis in eukaryotes has not yet been resolved in detail. One open question concerns the way the post-termination ribosome is tethered to the mRNA to allow binding of the necessary initiation factors. In caliciviruses, a family of positive strand RNA viruses, the capsid protein VP2 is translated via a termination/reinitiation process. VP2 of the feline calicivirus is encoded in the 3'-terminal open reading frame 3 (ORF3) that overlaps with the preceding ORF2 by four nucleotides. In transient expression studies, the efficiency of VP2 expression was 20 times lower than that of the ORF2 proteins. The close vicinity of the ORF2 termination signal and the ORF3 AUG codon was crucial, whereas the AUG could be replaced by alternative codons. Deletion mapping revealed that the 3'-terminal 69 nucleotides of ORF2 are crucial for VP2 expression. This sequence contains two essential sequence motifs. The first motif is conserved among caliciviruses and complementary to part of the 18 S rRNA. In conclusion, VP2 is expressed in a translation termination/reinitiation process that is special because it requires a sequence element that could prevent dissociation of post-termination ribosomes via hybridization with 18 S rRNA.     

A neurotoxic phospholipase a(2) impairs yeast amphiphysin activity and reduces endocytosis

Background

Presynaptically neurotoxic phospholipases A₂ inhibit synaptic vesicle recycling through endocytosis.

Principal Findings

Here we provide insight into the action of a presynaptically neurotoxic phospholipase A₂ ammodytoxin A (AtxA) on clathrin-dependent endocytosis in budding yeast. AtxA caused changes in the dynamics of vesicle formation and scission from the plasma membrane in a phospholipase activity dependent manner. Our data, based on synthetic dosage lethality screen and the analysis of the dynamics of sites of endocytosis, indicate that AtxA impairs the activity of amphiphysin.

Conclusions

We identified amphiphysin and endocytosis as the target of AtxA intracellular activity. We propose that AtxA reduces endocytosis following a mechanism of action which includes both a specific protein–protein interaction and enzymatic activity, and which is applicable to yeast and mammalian cells. Knowing how neurotoxic phospholipases A₂ work can open new ways to regulate endocytosis.     

Expansion of the genetic code enables design of a novel "gold" class of green fluorescent proteins

Much effort has been dedicated to the design of significantly red shifted variants of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) from Aequoria victora (av). These approaches have been based on classical engineering with the 20 canonical amino acids. We report here an expansion of these efforts by incorporation of an amino substituted variant of tryptophan into the "cyan" GFP mutant, which turned it into a "gold" variant. This variant possesses a red shift in emission unprecedented for any avFP, similar to "red" FPs, but with enhanced stability and a very low aggregation tendency. An increasing number of non-natural amino acids are available for chromophore redesign (by engineering of the genetic code) and enable new general strategies to generate novel classes of tailor-made GFP proteins.     

Soil nematode biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems

A review of the literature on nematode diversity (=number of species identified) of soil inhabiting nematodes was undertaken and analysed with regard to distance from the equator, vegetation type and sampling effort. After applying a correction factor for sampling effort the results indicated that species richness was greatest in temperate broadleaf forest (61.7 species per sample) followed by cultivated soil, grassland, tropical rainforest, temperate coniferous forests and polar vegetation. The maintenance of high biodiversity in cultivated soils is unexpected but may reflect the impact of dominance in calculating many indices. Species richness was greatest between latitudes 30–40° (93.9 species per sample) and least above 70°, the mean richness near the equator (i.e. 0–10°) was 80.6 species per sample. While these data would suggest that nematode diversity is not necessarily greatest at the equator, and evidence to support a 'humped back' theory of species richness is not conclusive, they contradict the suggestion that nematode diversity increases with increased latitude.     

phenoSeeder - A Robot System for Automated Handling and Phenotyping of Individual Seeds

The enormous diversity of seed traits is an intriguing feature and critical for the overwhelming success of higher plants. In particular, seed mass is generally regarded to be key for seedling development but is mostly approximated by using scanning methods delivering only two-dimensional data, often termed seed size. However, three-dimensional traits, such as the volume or mass of single seeds, are very rarely determined in routine measurements. Here, we introduce a device named phenoSeeder, which enables the handling and phenotyping of individual seeds of very different sizes. The system consists of a pick-and-place robot and a modular setup of sensors that can be versatilely extended. Basic biometric traits detected for individual seeds are two-dimensional data from projections, three-dimensional data from volumetric measures, and mass, from which seed density is also calculated. Each seed is tracked by an identifier and, after phenotyping, can be planted, sorted, or individually stored for further evaluation or processing (e.g. in routine seed-to-plant tracking pipelines). By investigating seeds of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), rapeseed (Brassica napus), and barley (Hordeum vulgare), we observed that, even for apparently round-shaped seeds of rapeseed, correlations between the projected area and the mass of seeds were much weaker than between volume and mass. This indicates that simple projections may not deliver good proxies for seed mass. Although throughput is limited, we expect that automated seed phenotyping on a single-seed basis can contribute valuable information for applications in a wide range of wild or crop species, including seed classification, seed sorting, and assessment of seed quality.Seeds play a major role in keeping continuity between successive generations (Esau, 1977) and are key for the distribution and evolution (Moles et al., 2005) of higher plants. Fertile seeds carry an embryo and may contain nutrient storage tissues in cotyledons, endosperm, and/or perisperm, supporting germination and seedling development at early developmental stages. Although this is true for all seed plants, various traits of seeds, such as size, shape, weight, and chemical composition, can be very different between plant species or accessions. For example, the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) accession Cape Verde Islands was reported to yield on average 40% fewer seeds than Landsberg erecta, but they are almost twice as heavy (Alonso-Blanco et al., 1999). Considering today’s plant species, single-seed mass may vary over a range of 11.5 orders of magnitude (Moles et al., 2005). Seed mass is under strong genetic control, whereas the total number of seeds of a plant is largely affected by the environment (Paul-Victor and Turnbull, 2009). It has been demonstrated that the size, mass, and shape of Arabidopsis seeds may be regulated by brassinosteroid (Jiang et al., 2013), and it was shown recently that seed size in rice (Oryza sativa) can be influenced by the epiallele Epi-rav6 (Zhang et al., 2015). The ability of plants to switch between small and larger seeds may be understood as an adaptation to novel environments (Igea et al., 2016). However, it is still not fully understood whether, or to what extent, the variability of seed traits within plant species or genotypes has an impact on the development and further performance of a plant.When comparing biometric seed data of different dimensions such as length (one-dimensional), projected area (two-dimensional [2D]), or volume and mass (both three-dimensional [3D]), one can argue that mass is the most relevant parameter as a proxy for the amount of reserves a seed provides for the offspring. This might be true even when considering that the type of reserves, such as proteins, carbohydrates, or lipids (Rolletschek et al., 2015), and also different seed tissues, such as seed coat, embryo, or endosperm, may contribute differently to seed mass (Alonso-Blanco et al., 1999). While seed mass and time to germination (radicle protrusion) do not necessarily correlate (Norden et al., 2009), in particular under greenhouse conditions, higher seed mass may be advantageous for seedling establishment under adverse environmental conditions (Moles et al., 2005). For example, shade-tolerant species showed largely higher seed masses than cogeneric species growing in open habitats, indicating that seedlings under low-light conditions need more reserves than under good light (Salisbury, 1974). Seedlings of wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) emerged more likely from heavier seeds than from small seeds under field conditions but not in the greenhouse (Stanton, 1984), and for Arabidopsis, seed mass was reported to be higher in populations growing naturally at higher altitudes taken as a proxy for harsher conditions (Montesinos-Navarro et al., 2011).Seed mass can be measured individually (Stanton, 1984), but it is generally collected as an average value of batches of 50 to 1,000 seeds (Jako et al., 2001; Jofuku et al., 2005; Montesinos-Navarro et al., 2011; Tanabata et al., 2012). Alternatively, 2D scans are analyzed to determine parameters such as seed length, width, area, and perimeter length as a measure for seed size (Tanabata et al., 2012). This approach can be implemented in high-throughput facilities to obtain projected areas of seed grains combined with genome-wide association studies (Yang et al., 2014). Although projected seed area can easily be measured with a common office scanner (Herridge et al., 2011; Tanabata et al., 2012; Moore et al., 2013), it is not necessarily a precise or reliable measure of the true seed size because it may depend on the shape (Alonso-Blanco et al., 1999) and the orientation of a seed at scan (see “Results”). These issues also apply when using 2D projections to calculate length-to-width ratios as a simple shape factor (Tanabata et al., 2012). Projected seed area also has been used to calculate seed mass, assuming a fixed relationship between these parameters (de Jong et al., 2011; Herridge et al., 2011). This may hold with sufficient accuracy when averaging a large number of seeds but might be misleading when considering individual seeds.From a physical point of view, volume should be a much better proxy for mass than 2D traits. Although it has been stated that for 65 species analyzed seed masses can be compared easily with seed volumes (Moles et al., 2005), it is not clear how these seed volumes were determined. Volumes can be assessed using advanced methods such as x-ray computed tomography (CT) on fruits (Stuppy et al., 2003) or synchrotron radiation x-ray tomographic microscopy applied in paleobiological studies (e.g. on fruits and seed; Friis et al., 2014). Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods are used to measure water uptake in kidney beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) and adzuki beans (Vigna angularis; Kikuchi et al., 2006) or to estimate seed weight and content (Borisjuk et al., 2011; Rolletschek et al., 2015) rather than volumes. To our best knowledge, affordable methods to measure seed volumes directly are not achievable so far. For that reason, we have set up a volume-carving method for 3D seed shape reconstruction that is described briefly here and in more detail in a recent publication (Roussel et al., 2016).While traits derived from scanning procedures can easily be assigned to individual seeds (Herridge et al., 2011), further handling and processing of phenotyped single seeds is not as simple, in particular for tiny ones like those of Arabidopsis. The aim of this work was to develop an automated seed-handling system that can analyze single seeds of very different sizes or shapes, from Arabidopsis seeds up to barley (Hordeum vulgare) seeds or even bigger. The phenoSeeder system is designed to pick and place seeds, to achieve basic morphometric traits (one-dimensional and 2D data from projections, 3D reconstruction data, and mass) of each individual seed, and to store all analyzed seed traits in a database. Another goal is to use phenoSeeder for seed-to-plant tracking approaches and to analyze whether, or which, particular seed traits have an impact on plant development and performance under various environmental conditions. We describe the main features of the phenoSeeder technology and present results obtained with seeds of three accessions of Arabidopsis, rapeseed (Brassica napus), and barley, respectively. When analyzing the data, we focused particularly on correlations between projected seed area, seed volume, and seed mass, with the hypothesis that the respective seed volume may better correlate with mass than the projected area.