Abstract

Microtubules are cytoskeletal structures involved in stability, transport and organization in the cell. The building blocks, the α- and β-tubulin heterodimers, form protofilaments that associate laterally into the hollow microtubule. Microtubule also exists as highly stable doublet microtubules in the cilia where stability is needed for ciliary beating and function. The doublet microtubule maintains its stability through interactions at its inner and outer junctions where its A- and B-tubules meet. Here, using cryo-electron microscopy, bioinformatics and mass spectrometry of the doublets of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and Tetrahymena thermophila, we identified two new inner junction proteins, FAP276 and FAP106, and an inner junction-associated protein, FAP126, thus presenting the complete answer to the inner junction identity and localization. Our structural study of the doublets shows that the inner junction serves as an interaction hub involved tubulin post-translational modification. These interactions contribute to the stability of the doublet and hence, normal ciliary motility.

Data availability

Cryo-EM maps have been deposited in EM data bank (EMDB) with accession numbers of EMD-20855 (48-nm averaged Chlamydomonas doublet), EMD-20858 (16-nm averaged Chlamydomonas IJ region) and EMD-20856 (16-nm averaged Tetrahymena IJ region). The model of IJ of Chlamydomonas is available in Protein Data Bank (PDB) with an accession number of PDB: 6VE7.The mass spectrometry is deposited in DataDryad (doi:10.5061/dryad.d51c59zxt). Available at:https://datadryad.org/stash/share/bkrXp5Ww0iQUis6ocuEya2ivHWQ_YiTFO-VLeIjkQcM

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Ahmad Abdelzaher Zaki Khalifa

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Muneyoshi Ichikawa

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Daniel Dai

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Shintaroh Kubo

    Department of Biophysics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Corbin Black

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Katya Peri

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Thomas S McAlear

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Simon Veyron

    Department of Pharmacology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Shun Kai Yang

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Javier Vargas

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Susanne Bechstedt

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  12. Jean-François Trempe

    Department of Pharmacology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  13. Khanh Huy Bui

    Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
    For correspondence
    huy.bui@mcgill.ca
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2814-9889

Funding

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (PJT-156354)

  • Khanh Huy Bui

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2016-04954)

  • Khanh Huy Bui

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2018-04813)

  • Javier Vargas

Canada Institute For Advanced Research (Arzieli Global Scholar Program)

  • Khanh Huy Bui

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Andrew P Carter, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom

Version history

  1. Received: October 15, 2019
  2. Accepted: January 16, 2020
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: January 17, 2020 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: January 31, 2020 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2020, Khalifa 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

  • 3,710
    views
  • 537
    downloads
  • 1,187
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

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)

  1. Ahmad Abdelzaher Zaki Khalifa
  2. Muneyoshi Ichikawa
  3. Daniel Dai
  4. Shintaroh Kubo
  5. Corbin Black
  6. Katya Peri
  7. Thomas S McAlear
  8. Simon Veyron
  9. Shun Kai Yang
  10. Javier Vargas
  11. Susanne Bechstedt
  12. Jean-François Trempe
  13. Khanh Huy Bui
(2020)
The inner junction complex of the cilia is an interaction hub that involves tubulin post-translational modifications
eLife 9:e52760.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.52760

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.52760

Further reading

    1. Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Marco van den Noort, Panagiotis Drougkas ... Bert Poolman
    Research Article

    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.

    1. Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Xiao-Ru Chen, Karuna Dixit ... Tatyana I Igumenova
    Research Article

    Regulated hydrolysis of the phosphoinositide phosphatidylinositol(4,5)-bis-phosphate to diacylglycerol and inositol-1,4,5-P3 defines a major eukaryotic pathway for translation of extracellular cues to intracellular signaling circuits. Members of the lipid-activated protein kinase C isoenzyme family (PKCs) play central roles in this signaling circuit. One of the regulatory mechanisms employed to downregulate stimulated PKC activity is via a proteasome-dependent degradation pathway that is potentiated by peptidyl-prolyl isomerase Pin1. Here, we show that contrary to prevailing models, Pin1 does not regulate conventional PKC isoforms α and βII via a canonical cis-trans isomerization of the peptidyl-prolyl bond. Rather, Pin1 acts as a PKC binding partner that controls PKC activity via sequestration of the C-terminal tail of the kinase. The high-resolution structure of full-length Pin1 complexed to the C-terminal tail of PKCβII reveals that a novel bivalent interaction mode underlies the non-catalytic mode of Pin1 action. Specifically, Pin1 adopts a conformation in which it uses the WW and PPIase domains to engage two conserved phosphorylated PKC motifs, the turn motif and hydrophobic motif, respectively. Hydrophobic motif is a non-canonical Pin1-interacting element. The structural information combined with the results of extensive binding studies and experiments in cultured cells suggest that non-catalytic mechanisms represent unappreciated modes of Pin1-mediated regulation of AGC kinases and other key enzymes/substrates.