Characterization of three areas of interactions stabilizing complexes between SecA and SecB, two proteins involved in protein export

Protein targeting to the ER membrane: multiple pathways and shared machinery

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) serves as a central hub for protein production and sorting in eukaryotic cells, processing approximately one-third of the cellular proteome. Protein targeting to the ER occurs through multiple pathways that operate both during and independent of translation. The classical translation-dependent pathway, mediated by cytosolic factors like signal recognition particle, recognizes signal peptides or transmembrane helices in nascent proteins, while translation-independent mechanisms utilize RNA-based targeting through specific sequence elements and RNA-binding proteins. At the core of these processes lies the Sec61 complex, which undergoes dynamic conformational changes and coordinates with numerous accessory factors to facilitate protein translocation and membrane insertion across and into the endoplasmic reticulum membrane. This review focuses on the molecular mechanisms of protein targeting to the ER, from the initial recognition of targeting signals to the dynamics of the translocation machinery, highlighting recent discoveries that have revealed unprecedented complexity in these cellular trafficking pathways.

Penetration into membrane of amino-terminal region of SecA when associated with SecYEG in active complexes

The general secretory (Sec) system of Escherichia coli translocates both periplasmic and outer membrane proteins through the cytoplasmic membrane. The pathway through the membrane is provided by a highly conserved translocon, which in E. coli comprises two heterotrimeric integral membrane complexes, SecY, SecE, and SecG (SecYEG), and SecD, SecF, and YajC (SecDF/YajC). SecA is an associated ATPase that is essential to the function of the Sec system. SecA plays two roles, it targets precursors to the translocon with the help of SecB and it provides energy via hydrolysis of ATP. SecA exists both free in the cytoplasm and integrally membrane associated. Here we describe details of association of the amino-terminal region of SecA with membrane. We use site-directed spin labelling and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy to show that when SecA is co-assembled into lipids with SecYEG to yield highly active translocons, the N-terminal region of SecA penetrates the membrane and lies at the interface between the polar and the hydrophobic regions, parallel to the plane of the membrane at a depth of approximately 5 Å. When SecA is bound to SecYEG, preassembled into proteoliposomes, or nonspecifically bound to lipids in the absence of SecYEG, the N-terminal region penetrates more deeply (8 Å). Implications of partitioning of the SecA N-terminal region into lipids on the complex between SecB carrying a precursor and SecA are discussed.

The Sec System: Protein Export in Escherichia coli

In Escherichia coli, proteins found in the periplasm or the outer membrane are exported from the cytoplasm by the general secretory, Sec, system before they acquire stably folded structure. This dynamic process involves intricate interactions among cytoplasmic and membrane proteins, both peripheral and integral, as well as lipids. In vivo, both ATP hydrolysis and proton motive force are required. Here, we review the Sec system from the inception of the field through early 2016, including biochemical, genetic, and structural data.

Determination of the intracellular concentration of the export chaperone SecB in Escherichia coli

SecB, a small tetrameric chaperone in Escherichia coli, plays a crucial role during protein export via the general secretory pathway by binding precursor polypeptides in a nonnative conformation and passing them to SecA, the ATPase of the translocon. The dissociation constants for the interactions are known; however to relate studies in vitro to export in a living cell requires knowledge of the concentrations of the proteins in the cell. Presently in the literature there is no report of a rigorous determination of the intracellular concentration of SecB. The values available vary over 60 fold and the details of the techniques used are not given. Here we use quantitative immunoblotting to determine the level of SecB expressed from the chromosome in E.coli grown in two commonly used media. In rich medium SecB was present at 1.6 ± 0.2 μM and in minimal medium at 2.5 ± 0.6 μM. These values allow studies of SecB carried out in vitro to be applied to the situation in the cell as SecB interacts with its binding partners to move precursor polypeptides through the export pathway.

Dissecting structures and functions of SecA-only protein-conducting channels: ATPase, pore structure, ion channel activity, protein translocation, and interaction with SecYEG/SecDF•YajC

SecA is an essential protein in the major bacterial Sec-dependent translocation pathways. E. coli SecA has 901 aminoacyl residues which form multi-functional domains that interact with various ligands to impart function. In this study, we constructed and purified tethered C-terminal deletion fragments of SecA to determine the requirements for N-terminal domains interacting with lipids to provide ATPase activity, pore structure, ion channel activity, protein translocation and interactions with SecYEG-SecDF•YajC. We found that the N-terminal fragment SecAN493 (SecA1-493) has low, intrinsic ATPase activity. Larger fragments have greater activity, becoming highest around N619-N632. Lipids greatly stimulated the ATPase activities of the fragments N608-N798, reaching maximal activities around N619. Three helices in amino-acyl residues SecA619-831, which includes the "Helical Scaffold" Domain (SecA619-668) are critical for pore formation, ion channel activity, and for function with SecYEG-SecDF•YajC. In the presence of liposomes, N-terminal domain fragments of SecA form pore-ring structures at fragment-size N640, ion channel activity around N798, and protein translocation capability around N831. SecA domain fragments ranging in size between N643-N669 are critical for functional interactions with SecYEG-SecDF•YajC. In the presence of liposomes, inactive C-terminal fragments complement smaller non-functional N-terminal fragments to form SecA-only pore structures with ion channel activity and protein translocation ability. Thus, SecA domain fragment interactions with liposomes defined critical structures and functional aspects of SecA-only channels. These data provide the mechanistic basis for SecA to form primitive, low-efficiency, SecA-only protein-conducting channels, as well as the minimal parameters for SecA to interact functionally with SecYEG-SecDF•YajC to form high-efficiency channels.

The SecB-like chaperone Rv1957 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis: crystallization and X-ray crystallographic analysis

Protein export is important in all bacteria, and bacteria have evolved specialized export machineries to fulfil this task. In Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, the general secretion pathway (Sec pathway) is conserved and is essential in performing the export of proteins. The bacterial Sec pathway post-translationally exports unfolded proteins out of the cytoplasm, and the core of the Sec pathway is composed of a heterotrimeric membrane-embedded channel, SecYEG, and two cytosolic components, SecA and SecB. SecB functions by stabilizing unfolded proteins, maintaining them in an export-competent state. Although SecB is mainly found in Proteobacteria, a SecB-like protein, Rv1957, that controls a stress-response toxin-antitoxin system, is found in M. tuberculosis. Rv1957 can also functionally replace the Escherichia coli SecB chaperone both in vivo and in vitro. In this work, the production, crystallization and X-ray crystallographic analysis of Rv1957 are reported. Notably, diffraction-quality crystals were obtained only at high concentrations of dimethyl sulfoxide, i.e. about 12%(v/v). The crystals of Rv1957 belonged to space group P212121, with unit-cell parameters a = 64.5, b = 92.0, c = 115.4 Å.

Large-scale evolutionary analyses on SecB subunits of bacterial sec system

Protein secretion systems are extremely important in bacteria because they are involved in many fundamental cellular processes. Of the various secretion systems, the Sec system is composed of seven different subunits in bacteria, and subunit SecB brings secreted preproteins to subunit SecA, which with SecYEG and SecDF forms a complex for the translocation of secreted preproteins through the inner membrane. Because of the wide existence of Sec system across bacteria, eukaryota, and archaea, each subunit of the Sec system has a complicated evolutionary relationship. Until very recently, 5,162 SecB sequences have been documented in UniProtKB, however no phylogenetic study has been conducted on a large sampling of SecBs from bacterial Sec secretion system, and no statistical study has been conducted on such size of SecBs in order to exhaustively investigate their variances of pairwise p-distance along taxonomic lineage from kingdom to phylum, to class, to order, to family, to genus and to organism. To fill in these knowledge gaps, 3,813 bacterial SecB sequences with full taxonomic lineage from kingdom to organism covering 4 phyla, 11 classes, 41 orders, 82 families, 269 genera, and 3,744 organisms were studied. Phylogenetic analysis revealed how the SecBs evolved without compromising their function with examples of 3-D structure comparison of two SecBs from Proteobacteria, and possible factors that affected the SecB evolution were considered. The average pairwise p-distances showed that the variance varied greatly in each taxonomic group. Finally, the variance was further partitioned into inter- and intra-clan variances, which could correspond to vertical and horizontal gene transfers, with relevance for Achromobacter, Brevundimonas, Ochrobactrum, and Pseudoxanthomonas.

The basis of asymmetry in the SecA:SecB complex

During export in Escherichia coli, SecB, a homotetramer structurally organized as a dimer of dimers, forms a complex with two protomers of SecA, which is the ATPase that provides energy to transfer a precursor polypeptide through the membrane via the SecYEG translocon. There are two areas of contact on SecB that stabilize the SecA:SecB complex: the flat sides of the SecB tetramer and the C-terminal 13 residues of SecB. These contacts within the complex are distributed asymmetrically. Breaking contact between SecA and the sides of SecB results in release of only one protomer of SecA yielding a complex of stoichiometry SecA1:SecB4. This complex mediates export; however, the coupling of ATP hydrolysis to movements of the precursor through the translocon is much less efficient than the coupling by the SecA2:SecB4 complex. Here we used heterotetrameric species of SecB to understand the source of the asymmetry in the contacts and its role in the functioning of the complex. The model of interactions presented suggests a way that binding between SecA and SecB might decrease the affinity of precursor polypeptides for SecB and facilitate the transfer to SecA.

Stoichiometry of SecYEG in the active translocase of Escherichia coli varies with precursor species

We have established a reconstitution system for the translocon SecYEG in proteoliposomes in which 55% of the accessible translocons are active. This level corresponds to the fraction of translocons that are active in vitro when assessed in their native environment of cytoplasmic membrane vesicles. Assays using these robust reconstituted proteoliposomes and cytoplasmic membrane vesicles have revealed that the number of SecYEG units involved in an active translocase depends on the precursor undergoing transfer. The active translocase for the precursor of periplasmic galactose-binding protein contains twice the number of heterotrimeric units of SecYEG as does that for the precursor of outer membrane protein A.

Functional implementation of the posttranslational SecB-SecA protein-targeting pathway in Bacillus subtilis

Bacillus subtilis and its close relatives are widely used in industry for the Sec-dependent secretory production of proteins. Like other Gram-positive bacteria, B. subtilis does not possess SecB, a dedicated targeting chaperone that posttranslationally delivers exported proteins to the SecA component of the translocase. In the present study, we have implemented a functional SecB-dependent protein-targeting pathway into B. subtilis by coexpressing SecB from Escherichia coli together with a SecA hybrid protein in which the carboxyl-terminal 32 amino acids of the B. subtilis SecA were replaced by the corresponding part of SecA from E. coli. In vitro pulldown experiments showed that, in contrast to B. subtilis SecA, the hybrid SecA protein gained the ability to efficiently bind to E. coli SecB, suggesting that the structural details of the extreme C-terminal region of SecA constitute a crucial SecB binding specificity determinant. Using a poorly exported mutant maltose binding protein (MalE11) and alkaline phosphatase (PhoA) as model proteins, we could demonstrate that the secretion of both proteins by B. subtilis was significantly enhanced in the presence of the artificial protein targeting pathway. Mutations in SecB that do not influence its chaperone activity but prevent its interaction with SecA abolished the secretion stimulation of both proteins, demonstrating that the implemented pathway in fact critically depends on the SecB targeting function. From a biotechnological view, our results open up a new strategy for the improvement of Gram-positive bacterial host systems for the secretory production of heterologous proteins.

Mapping of the SecA·SecY and SecA·SecG interfaces by site-directed in vivo photocross-linking

The two major components of the Eubacteria Sec-dependent protein translocation system are the heterotrimeric channel-forming component SecYEG and its binding partner, the SecA ATPase nanomotor. Once bound to SecYEG, the preprotein substrate, and ATP, SecA undergoes ATP-hydrolytic cycles that drive the stepwise translocation of proteins. Although a previous site-directed in vivo photocross-linking study (Mori, H., and Ito, K. (2006) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 103, 16159-16164) elucidated residues of SecY needed for interaction with SecA, no reciprocal study for SecA protein has been reported to date. In the present study we mapped residues of SecA that interact with SecY or SecG utilizing this approach. Our results show that distinct domains of SecA on two halves of the molecule interact with two corresponding SecY partners as well as with the central cytoplasmic domain of SecG. Our data support the in vivo relevance of the Thermotoga maritima SecA·SecYEG crystal structure that visualized SecYEG interaction for only one-half of SecA as well as previous studies indicating that SecA normally binds two molecules of SecYEG.

Direct identification of the site of binding on the chaperone SecB for the amino terminus of the translocon motor SecA

Protein export mediated by the general secretory Sec system in Escherichia coli proceeds by a dynamic transfer of a precursor polypeptide from the chaperone SecB to the SecA ATPase motor of the translocon and subsequently into and through the channel of the membrane-embedded SecYEG heterotrimer. The complex between SecA and SecB is stabilized by several separate sites of contact. Here we have demonstrated directly an interaction between the N-terminal residues 2 through 11 of SecA and the C-terminal 13 residues of SecB by isothermal titration calorimetry and analytical sedimentation velocity centrifugation. We discuss the unusual binding properties of SecA and SecB in context of a model for transfer of the precursor along the pathway of export.

Characterization of interactions between proteins using site-directed spin labeling and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy

Site-directed spin-labeling and the analysis of proteins by electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy provides a powerful tool for identifying sites of contact within protein complexes at the resolution of aminoacyl side chains. Here we describe the method as we have used it to study interactions of proteins involved in export via the Sec secretory system in Escherichia coli. The method is amendable to the study of most protein interactions.

Maximal efficiency of coupling between ATP hydrolysis and translocation of polypeptides mediated by SecB requires two protomers of SecA

SecA is the ATPase that provides energy for translocation of precursor polypeptides through the SecYEG translocon in Escherichia coli during protein export. We showed previously that when SecA receives the precursor from SecB, the ternary complex is fully active only when two protomers of SecA are bound. Here we used variants of SecA and of SecB that populate complexes containing two protomers of SecA to different degrees to examine both the hydrolysis of ATP and the translocation of polypeptides. We conclude that the low activity of the complexes with only one protomer is the result of a low efficiency of coupling between ATP hydrolysis and translocation.

The active ring-like structure of SecA revealed by electron crystallography: conformational change upon interaction with SecB

SecA is a multifunctional protein involved in protein translocation in bacteria. The structure of SecA on membrane is dramatically altered compared with that in solution, accompanying with functional changes. We previously reported the formation of a novel ring-like structure of SecA on lipid layers, which may constitute part of the preprotein translocation channel. In the present work, two-dimensional crystallization of Escherichia coli SecA on lipid monolayers was performed to reveal the structural details of SecA on lipid layers and to investigate its function. The 2D crystals composed of ring-like structures were obtained by specific interaction between SecA and negatively charged lipid. The 2D projection map and 3D reconstruction from negative stained 2D crystals exhibited a distinct open channel-like structure of SecA, with an outer diameter of 7 nm and an inner diameter of 2 nm, providing the structural evidence for SecA importance in forming the part of the translocation channel. This pore structure is altered after transferring crystals to the SecB solution, indicating that the lipid-specific SecA structure has the SecB binding activity. The strategy developed here provides a promising technique for studying structure of SecA complex with its ligand on membrane.

Trigger Factor can antagonize both SecB and DnaK/DnaJ chaperone functions in Escherichia coli

Polypeptides emerging from the ribosome are assisted by a pool of molecular chaperones and targeting factors, which enable them to efficiently partition as cytoplasmic, integral membrane, or exported proteins. In Escherichia coli, the chaperones SecB, Trigger Factor (TF), and DnaK are key players in this process. Here, we report that, as with dnaK or dnaJ mutants, a secB null strain exhibits a strong cold-sensitive (Cs) phenotype. Through suppressor analyses, we found that inactivating mutations in the tig gene encoding TF fully relieve both the Cs phenotype and protein aggregation observed in the absence of SecB. This antagonistic effect of TF depends on its ribosome-binding and chaperone activities but unrelated to its peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase (PPIase) activity. Furthermore, in contrast to the previously known synergistic action of TF and DnaK/DnaJ above 30 degrees C, a tig null mutation partially suppresses the Cs phenotype exhibited by a compromised DnaK/DnaJ chaperone machine. The antagonistic role of TF is further exemplified by the fact that the secB dnaJ double mutant is viable only in the absence of TF. Finally, we show that, in the absence of TF, more SecA and ribosomes are associated with the inner membrane, suggesting that the presence of TF directly or indirectly interferes with the process of cotranslational protein targeting to the Sec translocon.

Sites of interaction of a precursor polypeptide on the export chaperone SecB mapped by site-directed spin labeling

Export of protein into the periplasm of Escherichia coli via the general secretory system requires that the transported polypeptides be devoid of stably folded tertiary structure. Capture of the precursor polypeptides before they fold is achieved by the promiscuous binding to the chaperone SecB. SecB delivers its ligand to export sites through its specific binding to SecA, a peripheral component of the membrane translocon. At the translocon the ligand is passed from SecB to SecA and subsequently through the SecYEG channel. We have previously used site-directed spin labeling and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy to establish a docking model between SecB and SecA. Here we report use of the same strategy to map the pathway of a physiologic ligand, the unfolded form of precursor galactose-binding protein, on SecB. Our set of SecB variants each containing a single cysteine, which was used in the previous study, has been expanded to 48 residues, which cover 49% of the surface of SecB. The residues on SecB involved in contacts were identified as those that, upon addition of the unfolded polypeptide ligand, showed changes in spectral line shape consistent with restricted motion of the nitroxide. We conclude that the bound precursor makes contact with a large portion of the surface of the small chaperone. The sites on SecB that interact with the ligand are compared with the previously identified sites that interact with SecA and a model for transfer of the ligand is discussed.