Catalytic residues of microRNA Argonautes play a modest role in microRNA star strand destabilization in C. elegans

Kotagama, Kasuen, Grimme, Acadia L, Braviner, Leah, Yang, Bing, Sakhawala, Rima M, Yu, Guoyun, Benner, Lars Kristian, Joshua-Tor, Leemor, McJunkin, Katherine (March 2024) Catalytic residues of microRNA Argonautes play a modest role in microRNA star strand destabilization in C. elegans. Nucleic Acids Research (NAR). gkae170. ISSN 0305-1048 (Public Dataset)

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Abstract

Many microRNA (miRNA)-guided Argonaute proteins can cleave RNA ('slicing'), even though miRNA-mediated target repression is generally cleavage-independent. Here we use Caenorhabditis elegans to examine the role of catalytic residues of miRNA Argonautes in organismal development. In contrast to previous work, mutations in presumed catalytic residues did not interfere with development when introduced by CRISPR. We find that unwinding and decay of miRNA star strands is weakly defective in the catalytic residue mutants, with the largest effect observed in embryos. Argonaute-Like Gene 2 (ALG-2) is more dependent on catalytic residues for unwinding than ALG-1. The miRNAs that displayed the greatest (albeit minor) dependence on catalytic residues for unwinding tend to form stable duplexes with their star strand, and in some cases, lowering duplex stability alleviates dependence on catalytic residues. While a few miRNA guide strands are reduced in the mutant background, the basis of this is unclear since changes were not dependent on EBAX-1, an effector of Target-Directed miRNA Degradation (TDMD). Overall, this work defines a role for the catalytic residues of miRNA Argonautes in star strand decay; future work should examine whether this role contributes to the selection pressure to conserve catalytic activity of miRNA Argonautes across the metazoan phylogeny.

Item Type:	Paper
Subjects:	bioinformatics organism description > animal > C elegans bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > protein structure, function, modification organism description > animal bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > protein structure, function, modification > protein types > argonaute proteins bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > protein structure, function, modification > protein types
CSHL Authors:	Joshua-Tor, Leemor Braviner, Leah
Communities:	CSHL labs > Joshua-Tor lab
SWORD Depositor:	CSHL Elements
Depositing User:	CSHL Elements
Date:	12 March 2024
Date Deposited:	21 Mar 2024 12:52
Last Modified:	21 Mar 2024 12:52
Related URLs:	Publisher
Dataset ID:	SRA: PRJNA922944
URI:	https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/41473

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