Ca2+-inactivation of the mammalian ryanodine receptor type 1 in a lipidic environment revealed by cryo-EM

  1. Ashok R Nayak
  2. Montserrat Samsó  Is a corresponding author
  1. Virginia Commonwealth University, United States

Abstract

Activation of the intracellular Ca2+ channel ryanodine receptor (RyR) triggers a cytosolic Ca2+ surge, while elevated cytosolic Ca2+ inhibits the channel in a negative feedback mechanism. Cryo-EM of rabbit RyR1 embedded in nanodiscs under partially inactivating Ca2+ conditions revealed an open and a closed-inactivated conformation. Ca2+ binding to the high affinity site engages the central and C-terminal domains into a block, which pries the S6 four-helix bundle open. Further rotation of this block pushes S6 toward the central axis, closing (inactivating) the channel. Main characteristics of the Ca2+-inactivated conformation are downward conformation of the cytoplasmic assembly and tightly-knit subunit interface contributed by a fully occupied Ca2+ activation site, two inter-subunit resolved lipids, and two salt bridges between the EF hand domain and the S2-S3 loop validated by disease-causing mutations. The structural insight illustrates the prior Ca2+ activation prerequisite for Ca2+ inactivation and provides for seamless transition from inactivated to closed conformations.

Data availability

The cryo-EM maps and models are available in the EMDB and PDB databases.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Ashok R Nayak

    Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Montserrat Samsó

    Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, United States
    For correspondence
    montserrat.samso@vcuhealth.org
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2788-3283

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R01 AR068431)

  • Montserrat Samsó

Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA 352845)

  • Montserrat Samsó

National Institutes of Health (U24 GM116790)

  • Montserrat Samsó

National Institutes of Health (HSSN261200800001E)

  • Montserrat Samsó

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

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocol #AD10001029 of Virginia Commonwealth. Animals were deeply anesthetized for tissue harvesting, and every effort was made to minimize suffering.

Copyright

© 2022, Nayak & Samsó

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

  • 2,161
    views
  • 299
    downloads
  • 18
    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. Ashok R Nayak
  2. Montserrat Samsó
(2022)
Ca2+-inactivation of the mammalian ryanodine receptor type 1 in a lipidic environment revealed by cryo-EM
eLife 11:e75568.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75568

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75568

Further reading

    1. Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Joseph Clayton, Aarion Romany ... Jana Shen
    Research Article

    Aberrant signaling of BRAFV600E is a major cancer driver. Current FDA-approved RAF inhibitors selectively inhibit the monomeric BRAFV600E and suffer from tumor resistance. Recently, dimer-selective and equipotent RAF inhibitors have been developed; however, the mechanism of dimer selectivity is poorly understood. Here, we report extensive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the monomeric and dimeric BRAFV600E in the apo form or in complex with one or two dimer-selective (PHI1) or equipotent (LY3009120) inhibitor(s). The simulations uncovered the unprecedented details of the remarkable allostery in BRAFV600E dimerization and inhibitor binding. Specifically, dimerization retrains and shifts the αC helix inward and increases the flexibility of the DFG motif; dimer compatibility is due to the promotion of the αC-in conformation, which is stabilized by a hydrogen bond formation between the inhibitor and the αC Glu501. A more stable hydrogen bond further restrains and shifts the αC helix inward, which incurs a larger entropic penalty that disfavors monomer binding. This mechanism led us to propose an empirical way based on the co-crystal structure to assess the dimer selectivity of a BRAFV600E inhibitor. Simulations also revealed that the positive cooperativity of PHI1 is due to its ability to preorganize the αC and DFG conformation in the opposite protomer, priming it for binding the second inhibitor. The atomically detailed view of the interplay between BRAF dimerization and inhibitor allostery as well as cooperativity has implications for understanding kinase signaling and contributes to the design of protomer selective RAF inhibitors.

    1. Neuroscience
    2. Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Yangyu Wu, Yangyang Yan ... Fred J Sigworth
    Research Article

    We present near-atomic-resolution cryoEM structures of the mammalian voltage-gated potassium channel Kv1.2 in open, C-type inactivated, toxin-blocked and sodium-bound states at 3.2 Å, 2.5 Å, 3.2 Å, and 2.9 Å. These structures, all obtained at nominally zero membrane potential in detergent micelles, reveal distinct ion-occupancy patterns in the selectivity filter. The first two structures are very similar to those reported in the related Shaker channel and the much-studied Kv1.2–2.1 chimeric channel. On the other hand, two new structures show unexpected patterns of ion occupancy. First, the toxin α-Dendrotoxin, like Charybdotoxin, is seen to attach to the negatively-charged channel outer mouth, and a lysine residue penetrates into the selectivity filter, with the terminal amine coordinated by carbonyls, partially disrupting the outermost ion-binding site. In the remainder of the filter two densities of bound ions are observed, rather than three as observed with other toxin-blocked Kv channels. Second, a structure of Kv1.2 in Na+ solution does not show collapse or destabilization of the selectivity filter, but instead shows an intact selectivity filter with ion density in each binding site. We also attempted to image the C-type inactivated Kv1.2 W366F channel in Na+ solution, but the protein conformation was seen to be highly variable and only a low-resolution structure could be obtained. These findings present new insights into the stability of the selectivity filter and the mechanism of toxin block of this intensively studied, voltage-gated potassium channel.