6dbr
Cryo-EM structure of RAG in complex with one melted RSS and one unmelted RSS
Structural highlights
FunctionMALE_ECOLI Involved in the high-affinity maltose membrane transport system MalEFGK. Initial receptor for the active transport of and chemotaxis toward maltooligosaccharides.RAG1_DANRE Catalytic component of the RAG complex, a multiprotein complex that mediates the DNA cleavage phase during V(D)J recombination. V(D)J recombination assembles a diverse repertoire of immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor genes in developing B and T lymphocytes through rearrangement of different V (variable), in some cases D (diversity), and J (joining) gene segments. In the RAG complex, RAG1 mediates the DNA-binding to the conserved recombination signal sequences (RSS) and catalyzes the DNA cleavage activities by introducing a double-strand break between the RSS and the adjacent coding segment. RAG2 is not a catalytic component but is required for all known catalytic activities. DNA cleavage occurs in 2 steps: a first nick is introduced in the top strand immediately upstream of the heptamer, generating a 3'-hydroxyl group that can attack the phosphodiester bond on the opposite strand in a direct transesterification reaction, thereby creating 4 DNA ends: 2 hairpin coding ends and 2 blunt, 5'-phosphorylated ends. In addition to its endonuclease activity, RAG1 also acts as a E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase that mediates monoubiquitination of histone H3. Histone H3 monoubiquitination is required for the joining step of V(D)J recombination (By similarity). Publication Abstract from PubMedThe mechanism for initiating DNA cleavage by DDE-family enzymes, including the RAG endonuclease, which initiates V(D)J recombination, is not well understood. Here we report six cryo-EM structures of zebrafish RAG in complex with one or two intact recombination signal sequences (RSSs), at up to 3.9-A resolution. Unexpectedly, these structures reveal DNA melting at the heptamer of the RSSs, thus resulting in a corkscrew-like rotation of coding-flank DNA and the positioning of the scissile phosphate in the active site. Substrate binding is associated with dimer opening and a piston-like movement in RAG1, first outward to accommodate unmelted DNA and then inward to wedge melted DNA. These precleavage complexes show limited base-specific contacts of RAG at the conserved terminal CAC/GTG sequence of the heptamer, thus suggesting conservation based on a propensity to unwind. CA and TG overwhelmingly dominate terminal sequences in transposons and retrotransposons, thereby implicating a universal mechanism for DNA melting during the initiation of retroviral integration and DNA transposition. DNA melting initiates the RAG catalytic pathway.,Ru H, Mi W, Zhang P, Alt FW, Schatz DG, Liao M, Wu H Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2018 Aug;25(8):732-742. doi: 10.1038/s41594-018-0098-5. Epub, 2018 Jul 30. PMID:30061602[1] From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. See AlsoReferences
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