Structural basis for the activation of PLC-γ isozymes by phosphorylation and cancer-associated mutations
Abstract
Direct activation of the human phospholipase C-g isozymes (PLC-g1, -g2) by tyrosine phosphorylation is fundamental to the control of diverse biological processes, including chemotaxis, platelet aggregation, and adaptive immunity. In turn, aberrant activation of PLC-g1 and PLC-g2 is implicated in inflammation, autoimmunity, and cancer. Although structures of isolated domains from PLC-g isozymes are available, these structures are insufficient to define how release of basal autoinhibition is coupled to phosphorylation-dependent enzyme activation. Here we describe the first high-resolution structure of a full-length PLC-g isozyme and use it to underpin a detailed model of their membrane-dependent regulation. Notably, an interlinked set of regulatory domains integrates basal autoinhibition, tyrosine kinase engagement, and additional scaffolding functions with the phosphorylation-dependent, allosteric control of phospholipase activation. The model also explains why mutant forms of the PLC-g isozymes found in several cancers have a wide spectrum of activities, and highlights how these activities are tuned during disease.
Data availability
Coordinates and structure factors for PLC-gamma1 are deposited in the Protein Data Bank under accession number 6PBC.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (R01-GM057391)
- John Sondek
National Institutes of Health (R01-GM098894)
- Qisheng Zhang
- John Sondek
National Science Foundation (DGE-1650116)
- Edhriz Siraliev-Perez
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Hajicek 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
-
- 9,051
- views
-
- 1,088
- downloads
-
- 54
- 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
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Identifying target proteins for bioactive molecules is essential for understanding their mechanisms, developing improved derivatives, and minimizing off-target effects. Despite advances in target identification (target-ID) technologies, significant challenges remain, impeding drug development. Most target-ID methods use cell lysates, but maintaining an intact cellular context is vital for capturing specific drug–protein interactions, such as those with transient protein complexes and membrane-associated proteins. To address these limitations, we developed POST-IT (Pup-On-target for Small molecule Target Identification Technology), a non-diffusive proximity tagging system for live cells, orthogonal to the eukaryotic system. POST-IT utilizes an engineered fusion of proteasomal accessory factor A and HaloTag to transfer Pup to proximal proteins upon directly binding to the small molecule. After significant optimization to eliminate self-pupylation and polypupylation, minimize depupylation, and optimize chemical linkers, POST-IT successfully identified known targets and discovered a new binder, SEPHS2, for dasatinib, and VPS37C as a new target for hydroxychloroquine, enhancing our understanding these drugs’ mechanisms of action. Furthermore, we demonstrated the application of POST-IT in live zebrafish embryos, highlighting its potential for broad biological research and drug development.
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Inhibition of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) has proven to be highly effective in the treatment of B-cell malignancies such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), autoimmune disorders, and multiple sclerosis. Since the approval of the first BTK inhibitor (BTKi), Ibrutinib, several other inhibitors including Acalabrutinib, Zanubrutinib, Tirabrutinib, and Pirtobrutinib have been clinically approved. All are covalent active site inhibitors, with the exception of the reversible active site inhibitor Pirtobrutinib. The large number of available inhibitors for the BTK target creates challenges in choosing the most appropriate BTKi for treatment. Side-by-side comparisons in CLL have shown that different inhibitors may differ in their treatment efficacy. Moreover, the nature of the resistance mutations that arise in patients appears to depend on the specific BTKi administered. We have previously shown that Ibrutinib binding to the kinase active site causes unanticipated long-range effects on the global conformation of BTK (Joseph et al., 2020). Here, we show that binding of each of the five approved BTKi to the kinase active site brings about distinct allosteric changes that alter the conformational equilibrium of full-length BTK. Additionally, we provide an explanation for the resistance mutation bias observed in CLL patients treated with different BTKi and characterize the mechanism of action of two common resistance mutations: BTK T474I and L528W.