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Structural characterization of a capping protein interaction motif defines a family of actin filament regulators

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 17, pages 497–503 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Capping protein (CP) regulates actin dynamics by binding the barbed ends of actin filaments. Removal of CP may be one means to harness actin polymerization for processes such as cell movement and endocytosis. Here we structurally and biochemically investigated a CP interaction (CPI) motif present in the otherwise unrelated proteins CARMIL and CD2AP. The CPI motif wraps around the stalk of the mushroom-shaped CP at a site distant from the actin-binding interface, which lies on the top of the mushroom cap. We propose that the CPI motif may act as an allosteric modulator, restricting CP to a low-affinity, filament-binding conformation. Structure-based sequence alignments extend the CPI motif–containing family to include CIN85, CKIP-1, CapZIP and a relatively uncharacterized protein, WASHCAP (FAM21). Peptides comprising these CPI motifs are able to inhibit CP and to uncap CP-bound actin filaments.

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Figure 1: Domain organization of CPI motif–containing proteins.
Figure 2: Functional definition of the CPI motif.
Figure 3: CARMIL- and CD2AP-induced uncapping of CP-capped actin filaments monitored by TIRF microscopy.
Figure 4: The structure of the CPΔβTent–CARMIL CPI motif complex.
Figure 5: Structural differences between CARMIL and CD2AP in binding CP.
Figure 6: The CPI motif family of proteins.
Figure 7: Models of CPI motif uncapping.

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  • 20 December 2011

    In the version of this article initially published online, the captions for the supplementary videos were missing. The error has been corrected in the HTML version of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Biomedical Research Council of A*STAR for support to R.C.R. and the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, a facility supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan for provision of beam time and assistance in data collection. The Synchrotron Radiation Protein Crystallography Facility is supported by the National Research Program for Genomic Medicine. J.A.C. acknowledges US National Institutes of Health grant GM 38542 for support.

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Author notes

  1. Maria Hernandez-Valladares and Taekyung Kim: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, A*STAR, Proteos, Singapore

    Maria Hernandez-Valladares, Balakrishnan Kannan, Alvin Tung, Adeleke H Aguda, Mårten Larsson & Robert C Robinson

  2. Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, Washington University Medical School, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

    Taekyung Kim & John A Cooper

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Contributions

M.H.-V., T.K., B.K. and A.T. carried out the work; A.H.A. created reagents used in the work; M.H.-V., T.K., M.L., J.A.C. and R.C.R. designed the work and interpreted the data; R.C.R. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Robert C Robinson.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figures 1–6, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 1269 kb)

Supplementary Video 1

Uncapping of CP capped actin filaments in the presence of CBR115. Field of view, 60 × 120 µm2. Methods are found in Supplementary Methods. (AVI 1540 kb)

Supplementary Video 2

Uncapping of CP capped actin filaments in the presence of CBR37. Field of view, 60 × 120 µm2. Methods are found in Supplementary Methods. (AVI 1576 kb)

Supplementary Video 3

CP capped actin filaments in the presence of CD2AP CPI motif. Field of view, 60 × 120 µm2. Methods are found in Supplementary Methods. (AVI 1300 kb)

Supplementary Video 4

Actin filaments in the absence of CP. Field of view, 60 × 120 µm2. Methods are found in Supplementary Methods. (AVI 1175 kb)

Supplementary Video 5

CP capped actin filaments in the absence of CARMIL or CD2AP truncations. Field of view, 60 × 120 µm2. Methods are found in Supplementary Methods. (AVI 1320 kb)

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Hernandez-Valladares, M., Kim, T., Kannan, B. et al. Structural characterization of a capping protein interaction motif defines a family of actin filament regulators. Nat Struct Mol Biol 17, 497–503 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.1792

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