Novel insights into guide RNA 5ʹ-Nucleoside/Tide binding by human argonaute 2

Munishikha Kalia, Sarah Willkomm, Jens Christian Claussen, Tobias Restle*, Alexandre M.J.J. Bonvin

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The human Argonaute 2 (hAgo2) protein is a key player of RNA interference (RNAi). Upon complex formation with small non-coding RNAs, the protein initially interacts with the 51-end of a given guide RNA through multiple interactions within the MID domain. This interaction has been reported to show a strong bias for U and A over C and G at the 5ʹ-position. Performing molecular dynamics simulations of binary hAgo2/OH–guide–RNA complexes, we show that hAgo2 is a highly flexible protein capable of binding to guide strands with all four possible 51-bases. Especially, in the case of C and G this is associated with rather large individual conformational rearrangements affecting the MID, PAZ and even the N-terminal domains to different degrees. Moreover, a 5ʹ-G induces domain motions in the protein, which trigger a previously unreported interaction between the 51-base and the L2 linker domain. Combining our in silico analyses with biochemical studies of recombinant hAgo2, we find that, contrary to previous observations, hAgo2 is capable of functionally accommodating guide strands regardless of the 5ʹ-base.

Original languageEnglish
Article number22
JournalInternational Journal of Molecular Sciences
Volume17
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Dec 2015

Bibliographical note

© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open
access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons by
Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords

  • Enzyme kinetics
  • Fluorescence spectroscopy
  • MD
  • Pre-steady-state kinetics
  • RNAi

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