WICH, a member of WASP-interacting protein family, cross-links actin filaments

In yeast, Verprolin plays an important role in rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton. There are three mammalian homologues of Verprolin, WIP, CR16, and WICH, and all of them bind actin and Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (WASP) and/or neural-WASP. Here, we describe a novel function of WICH. In vitro co-sedimentation analysis revealed that WICH not only binds to actin filaments but also cross-links them. Fluorescence and electron microscopy detected that this cross-linking results in straight bundled actin filaments. Overexpression of WICH alone in cultured fibroblast caused the formation of thick actin fibers. This ability of WICH depended on its own actin cross-linking activity. Importantly, the actin cross-linking activity of WICH was modified through a direct association with N-WASP. Taken together, these data suggest that WICH induces a bundled form of actin filament with actin cross-linking activity and the association with N-WASP suppresses that activity. WICH thus appears to be a novel actin bundling protein.     

Actin binding and proline rich motifs of CR16 play redundant role in growth of vrp1Delta cells

CR16, (Glucocorticoid-regulated) belongs to the verprolin family of proteins which are characterized by the presence of a V domain (verprolin) at the N-terminal. Expression of CR16 suppressed the growth and endocytosis defect of vrp1Delta strain without correcting the actin patch polarization defect. The V domain of CR16 is critical for suppression of the growth defect of vrp1Delta strain but not for localisation to cortical actin patches. Mutations in the actin binding motif alone did not abolish the activity of CR16 but the mutations in combination with deletion of N-terminal proline rich motif abolished the ability of CR16 to suppress the growth defect. This suggests that the V domain of CR16 has two functionally redundant motifs and either one of these motifs is sufficient for suppressing the growth defect of vrp1Delta strain. This is in contrast to the observation that both WIP and WIRE require the actin binding motif for their activity.