Cooperative unfolding of distinctive mechanoreceptor domains transduces force into signals
Abstract
How cells sense their mechanical environment and transduce forces into biochemical signals is a crucial yet unresolved question in mechanobiology. Platelets use receptor glycoprotein Ib (GPIb), specifically its α subunit (GPIbα), to signal as they tether and translocate on von Willebrand factor (VWF) of injured arterial surfaces against blood flow. Force slows VWF-GPIbα dissociation (catch bond) and unfolds the GPIbα leucine-rich repeat domain (LRRD) and juxtamembrane mechanosensitive domain (MSD). How these mechanical processes trigger biochemical signals remains unknown. Here we analyze these extracellular events and the resulting intracellular Ca2+ on a single platelet in real time, revealing that LRRD unfolding intensifies the Ca2+ signal analogously whereas MSD unfolding determines the Ca2+ type digitally. The >30nm macroglycopeptide separating the two domains transmits VWF-GPIbα bond lifetime prolonged by LRRD unfolding to enhance MSD unfolding cooperatively at an optimal force, which may serve as a design principle for a generic mechanosensory machine.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (Grant HL132019)
- Cheng Zhu
Diabetes Australia (IRMA G179720)
- Lining Ju
University of Sydney (2016 Sydney Medical School ECR Kickstart Grant)
- Lining Ju
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Taekjip Ha, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States
Ethics
Human subjects: Human RBCs and platelets for BFP experiments were collected abiding a protocol (#H12354) approved by the Institute Review Broad of Georgia Institute of Technology. Informed consent was obtained from each blood donor.
Version history
- Received: February 23, 2016
- Accepted: July 18, 2016
- Accepted Manuscript published: July 19, 2016 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: September 13, 2016 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2016, Ju et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 2,500
- views
-
- 570
- downloads
-
- 66
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
We integrate evolutionary predictions based on the neutral theory of molecular evolution with protein dynamics to generate mechanistic insight into the molecular adaptations of the SARS-COV-2 spike (S) protein. With this approach, we first identified candidate adaptive polymorphisms (CAPs) of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein and assessed the impact of these CAPs through dynamics analysis. Not only have we found that CAPs frequently overlap with well-known functional sites, but also, using several different dynamics-based metrics, we reveal the critical allosteric interplay between SARS-CoV-2 CAPs and the S protein binding sites with the human ACE2 (hACE2) protein. CAPs interact far differently with the hACE2 binding site residues in the open conformation of the S protein compared to the closed form. In particular, the CAP sites control the dynamics of binding residues in the open state, suggesting an allosteric control of hACE2 binding. We also explored the characteristic mutations of different SARS-CoV-2 strains to find dynamic hallmarks and potential effects of future mutations. Our analyses reveal that Delta strain-specific variants have non-additive (i.e., epistatic) interactions with CAP sites, whereas the less pathogenic Omicron strains have mostly additive mutations. Finally, our dynamics-based analysis suggests that the novel mutations observed in the Omicron strain epistatically interact with the CAP sites to help escape antibody binding.
-
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Bacteria utilize various strategies to prevent internal dehydration during hypertonic stress. A common approach to countering the effects of the stress is to import compatible solutes such as glycine betaine, leading to simultaneous passive water fluxes following the osmotic gradient. OpuA from Lactococcus lactis is a type I ABC-importer that uses two substrate-binding domains (SBDs) to capture extracellular glycine betaine and deliver the substrate to the transmembrane domains for subsequent transport. OpuA senses osmotic stress via changes in the internal ionic strength and is furthermore regulated by the 2nd messenger cyclic-di-AMP. We now show, by means of solution-based single-molecule FRET and analysis with multi-parameter photon-by-photon hidden Markov modeling, that the SBDs transiently interact in an ionic strength-dependent manner. The smFRET data are in accordance with the apparent cooperativity in transport and supported by new cryo-EM data of OpuA. We propose that the physical interactions between SBDs and cooperativity in substrate delivery are part of the transport mechanism.