Protein arginine methylation modulates light-harvesting antenna translation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

Methylation of protein arginines represents an important post-translational modification mechanism, which has so far primarily been characterized in mammalian cells. In this work, we successfully identified and characterized arginine methylation as a crucial type of post-translational modification in the activity regulation of the cytosolic translation repressor protein NAB1 in the plant model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. NAB1 represses the cytosolic translation of light-harvesting protein encoding mRNAs by sequestration into translationally silent messenger ribonucleoprotein complexes (mRNPs). Protein arginine methylation of NAB1 could be demonstrated by PRMT1 catalyzed methylation of recombinant NAB1 in vitro, and by immunodetection of methylated NAB1 arginines in vivo. Mass spectrometric analyses of NAB1 purified from C. reinhardtii revealed the asymmetric dimethylation of Arg90 and Arg92 within GAR motif I. Inhibition of arginine methylation by either adenosine-2'-3'-dialdehyde (AdOx) or 7,7'-carbonylbis(azanediyl)bis(4-hydroxynaphthalene-2-sulfonic acid) sodium salt hydrate (AMI-1) caused a dark-green phenotype characterized by the increased accumulation of light-harvesting complex proteins, and indicating a reduced translation repressor activity of NAB1. The extent of NAB1 arginine methylation depends on the growth conditions, with phototrophic growth causing a high methylation state and heterotrophic growth resulting in lowered methylation of the protein. In addition, we could show that NAB1 activity regulation by arginine methylation operates independently from cysteine-based redox control, which has previously been shown to control the activity of NAB1.

Time-course global expression profiles of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii during photo-biological H2 production.

We used a microarray study in order to compare the time course expression profiles of two Chlamydomonas reinhardtii strains, namely the high H2 producing mutant stm6glc4 and its parental WT strain during H2 production induced by sulfur starvation. Major cellular reorganizations in photosynthetic apparatus, sulfur and carbon metabolism upon H2 production were confirmed as common to both strains. More importantly, our results pointed out factors which lead to the higher H2 production in the mutant including a higher starch accumulation in the aerobic phase and a lower competition between the H2ase pathway and alternative electron sinks within the H2 production phase. Key candidate genes of interest with differential expression pattern include LHCSR3, essential for efficient energy quenching (qE). The reduced LHCSR3 protein expression in mutant stm6glc4 could be closely related to the high-light sensitive phenotype. H2 measurements carried out with the LHCSR3 knock-out mutant npq4 however clearly demonstrated that a complete loss of this protein has almost no impact on H2 yields under moderate light conditions. The nuclear gene disrupted in the high H2 producing mutant stm6glc4 encodes for the mitochondrial transcription termination factor (mTERF) MOC1, whose expression strongly increases during -S-induced H2 production in WT strains. Studies under phototrophic high-light conditions demonstrated that the presence of functional MOC1 is a prerequisite for proper LHCSR3 expression. Furthermore knock-down of MOC1 in a WT strain was shown to improve the total H2 yield significantly suggesting that this strategy could be applied to further enhance H2 production in other strains already displaying a high H2 production capacity. By combining our array data with previously published metabolomics data we can now explain some of the phenotypic characteristics which lead to an elevated H2 production in stm6glc4.

Cysteine modification of a specific repressor protein controls the translational status of nucleus-encoded LHCII mRNAs in Chlamydomonas.

The cytosolic RNA-binding protein NAB1 represses translation of LHCII (light-harvesting complex of photosystem II) encoding mRNAs by sequestration into translationally silent mRNP complexes in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. NAB1 contains 2 cysteine residues, Cys-181 and Cys-226, within its C-terminal RRM motif. Modification of these cysteines either by oxidation or by alkylation in vitro was accompanied by a decrease in RNA-binding affinity for the target mRNA sequence. To confirm the relevance of reversible NAB1 cysteine oxidation for the regulation of its activity in vivo, we replaced both cysteines with serines. All examined cysteine single and double mutants exhibited a reduced antenna at PSII caused by a perturbed NAB1 deactivation mechanism, with double mutations and Cys-226 single mutations causing a stronger and more distinctive phenotype compared with the Cys-181 mutation. Our data indicated that the responsible redox control mechanism is mediated by modification of single cysteines. Polysome analyses and RNA co-immunoprecipitation experiments demonstrated the interconnection of the NAB1 thiol state and its activity as a translation repressor in vivo. NAB1 is fully active in its dithiol state and is reversibly deactivated by modification of its cysteines. In summary, this work is an example that cytosolic translation of nucleus encoded photosynthetic genes is regulated via a reversible cysteine-based redox switch in a RNA-binding translation repressor protein.