Post-translational regulation of retinal IMPDH1 in vivo to adjust GTP synthesis to illumination conditions
Abstract
We report the in vivo regulation of Inosine-5´-monophosphate dehydrogenase 1 (IMPDH1) in the retina. IMPDH1 catalyzes the rate-limiting step in the de novo synthesis of guanine nucleotides, impacting the cellular pools of GMP, GDP and GTP. Guanine nucleotide homeostasis is central to photoreceptor cells, where cGMP is the signal transducing molecule in the light response. Mutations in IMPDH1 lead to inherited blindness. We unveil a light-dependent phosphorylation of retinal IMPDH1 at Thr159/Ser160 in the Bateman domain that desensitizes the enzyme to allosteric inhibition by GDP/GTP. When exposed to bright light, living mice increase the rate of GTP and ATP synthesis in their retinas; concomitant with IMPDH1 aggregate formation at the outer segment layer. Inhibiting IMPDH activity in living mice delays rod mass recovery. We unveil a novel mechanism of regulation of IMPDH1 in vivo, important for understanding GTP homeostasis in the retina and the pathogenesis of adRP10 IMPDH1 mutations.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (BFU2016-80583-R)
- Ana Méndez
Laser Lab Europe (654148)
- Pablo Loza-Alvarez
Fundación Ramón Areces (XVII Edition Rare Diseases)
- Ana Méndez
Fundacio La Marató (20141730)
- Jordi Andilla
- Pablo Loza-Alvarez
- Ana Méndez
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (BFU2016-79237-P)
- Ruben M Buey
Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI18/00754)
- Pedro de la Villa
Junta de Castilla y León (Graduate student fellowship)
- David Fernández-Justel
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (SEV-2015-0522)
- Pablo Loza-Alvarez
Centres de Recerca de Catalunya (CERCA Institutional Support)
- Pablo Loza-Alvarez
- Ana Méndez
Fundació Privada Cellex (ICFO Institutional Support)
- Pablo Loza-Alvarez
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Pertaining to animal research, this study was conducted in accordance with the ARVO statement for the use of animals in ophthalmic and vision research and in compliance with acts 5/1995 and 214/1997 for the welfare of experimental animals of the autonomous community (Generalitat) of Catalonia; and approved by the ethics committee on animal experiments of the University of Barcelona (Generalitat Reference #9906, protocols Bell 216/17; 217/17 and 218/17).
Copyright
© 2020, Plana-Bonamaisó 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
-
- 2,992
- views
-
- 394
- downloads
-
- 40
- 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
- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Mycofactocin is a redox cofactor essential for the alcohol metabolism of mycobacteria. While the biosynthesis of mycofactocin is well established, the gene mftG, which encodes an oxidoreductase of the glucose-methanol-choline superfamily, remained functionally uncharacterized. Here, we show that MftG enzymes are almost exclusively found in genomes containing mycofactocin biosynthetic genes and are present in 75% of organisms harboring these genes. Gene deletion experiments in Mycolicibacterium smegmatis demonstrated a growth defect of the ∆mftG mutant on ethanol as a carbon source, accompanied by an arrest of cell division reminiscent of mild starvation. Investigation of carbon and cofactor metabolism implied a defect in mycofactocin reoxidation. Cell-free enzyme assays and respirometry using isolated cell membranes indicated that MftG acts as a mycofactocin dehydrogenase shuttling electrons toward the respiratory chain. Transcriptomics studies also indicated remodeling of redox metabolism to compensate for a shortage of redox equivalents. In conclusion, this work closes an important knowledge gap concerning the mycofactocin system and adds a new pathway to the intricate web of redox reactions governing the metabolism of mycobacteria.
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Genetics and Genomics
Yerba mate (YM, Ilex paraguariensis) is an economically important crop marketed for the elaboration of mate, the third-most widely consumed caffeine-containing infusion worldwide. Here, we report the first genome assembly of this species, which has a total length of 1.06 Gb and contains 53,390 protein-coding genes. Comparative analyses revealed that the large YM genome size is partly due to a whole-genome duplication (Ip-α) during the early evolutionary history of Ilex, in addition to the hexaploidization event (γ) shared by core eudicots. Characterization of the genome allowed us to clone the genes encoding methyltransferase enzymes that catalyse multiple reactions required for caffeine production. To our surprise, this species has converged upon a different biochemical pathway compared to that of coffee and tea. In order to gain insight into the structural basis for the convergent enzyme activities, we obtained a crystal structure for the terminal enzyme in the pathway that forms caffeine. The structure reveals that convergent solutions have evolved for substrate positioning because different amino acid residues facilitate a different substrate orientation such that efficient methylation occurs in the independently evolved enzymes in YM and coffee. While our results show phylogenomic constraint limits the genes coopted for convergence of caffeine biosynthesis, the X-ray diffraction data suggest structural constraints are minimal for the convergent evolution of individual reactions.