Background
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the most pervasive neurodegenerative diseases. Currently, the etiology and mechanism of PD are not fully clear. But, aging, environmental and genetic factors appear to play the key role in PD [
2,
7,
21].
PINK1 (
PTEN-induced putative kinase 1) gene is the causative gene for PARK6, which was cloned in 2004 by Valente et al. [
20]. Encoded by the
PINK1 gene, PINK1 protein contains 581 amino acids, including a mitochondrial localization domain (34 amino acids) and a serine/threonine kinase domain (354 amino acids). The kinase domain (KD) is highly conserved, capable of catalyzing by binding to the peptide substrate and transferring ATP phosphate group [
20]. Recent studies showed that PINK1 may directly phosphorylate other proteins, exerting anti-oxidative stress and anti-apoptosis effects. TRAP1 protein is found to be the substrate of PINK1 [
14], through which, PINK1 can reduce the release of mitochondrial cytochrome c and fill the gap caused by cell damage and even cell death under stress. In 2008, Kim et al. [
8] found that PINK1 can phosphorylate Parkin directly, regulating their transfer to the mitochondria. In addition, PINK1 kinase domain possesses both autophosphorylation [
11] and phosphorylation activity in vitro, such as phosphorylating histone H1 or casein [
17,
18]. In our previous work, we found two novel
PINK1 homozygous disease-causing mutations (T313 M, R492X) [
6], both located in the kinase domain. Matenia et al. [
9] found that microtubule affinity regulating kinase 2 (MARK2) can phosphorylate PINK1, and Thr313 was proved to be the phosphorylation site. When T313 M mutation occurs, PINK1 cannot be phosphorylated, leading to mitochondrial toxicity and abnormal distribution in nerve cells. Arg492 is located at the junction of PINK1 protein kinase domain and the carboxyl terminus. R492X mutation can cause the loss of the entire carboxyl terminal, altering PINK1 kinase activity [
6,
17].
There has been no report on the identification of PINK1 autophosphorylation sites in vitro studies and the effect on physiological functions brought by the changes of these sites. Our study demonstrated that Ser465 was one of the autophosphorylation sites in PINK1. The autophosphorylation of PINK1 protein can affect its kinase activity, protein stability, as well as the interaction with Parkin. PINK1 causative mutations T313 M and R492X may cause PD by affecting its kinase activity and interaction with Parkin.
Methods
Plasmid construction
293A human embryonic kidney cells, pGEX-5X-1 vector, pKH3-PINK1 and EGFP-Parkin plasmid were provided by the school of Life Science of University of Science and Technology in China. pKH3-PINK1-T313 M, pKH3-PINK1-R492X and pGEX-5X-1-PINK1 plasmids were constructed in our previous work [
3,
22]. pGEX-5X-1-PINK1-T313 M, pGEX-5X-1-PINK1-R492X, pGEX-5X-1-PINK1-S465A, pGEX-5X-1-PINK1-S465D, pKH3-PINK1-S465A and pKH3-PINK1- S465D plasmids were all constructed by this study.
Protein expression and purification in E. coli
We used the same method to induce prokaryotic plasmid expression and purify protein as described in a previous study [
3,
22]. A small amount of GST-PINK1 bacteria (112–581 aa) were inoculated into a 600 mL culture medium (AMP+), incubated at 37 °C, 250 rpm. When OD values reached between 0.4–0.6, 100 μl IPTG was added to the culture and incubated for 3 h under the same condition. Resuspended the culture with 1XPBS, followed by sonication, then a crude supernatant was obtained. The protein extract was purified with G4B purification column. SDS-PAGE was used to identify the purified protein, followed by Coomassie brilliant blue staining.
Kinase assay and mass spectrometry
Autophosphorylation of recombinant PINK1 protein was performed in the reaction system containing 2.4 μL of 10X kinase reaction buffer, 19.6 μL of GST-PINK1 purified protein supernatant, 2 μL of 10 mM ATP. Then the mixture was incubated in 30 °C water bath for 1.5 h. All the phosphorylated proteins were denatured by 5XSDS, heating at 100 °C for 5 min, resolved by SDS-PAGE, followed by brilliant coomassie blue R250 staining for 30 min and decolorizing for 5 min. Excised gel slices containing desired bands, can be stored at 4 °C and sent for mass spectrometry analysis.
Autoradiography
The proteins were purified by the same method described before. 2.4 μL of 10X kinase reaction buffer, 19.6 μL of purified protein supernatant, 10 μCi of [γ-32P] ATP were added, and incubated in 30 °C water bath for 30 min. Then 5XSDS was added, and boiled at 100 °C for 5 min. SDS-PAGE was carried out as described previously, and protein bands were stained with brilliant coomassie blue R250 for 5 min, and decolorized for another 5 min. The plastic wrapped gel and a film in the X-ray film cassette were placed in a dark room. The film was exposed at −80 °C for 8-16 h, followed by developing and fixing.
Cell culture and transfection
The 293A cells were maintained in the medium containing 10% fetal bovine serum, 100 U/ml penicillin and 100 U/ml streptomycin, and incubated at 37 °C in a CO2 incubator. Plasmid transfection was performed according to the Lipofectamine®2000 protocol.
Immunocytochemistry staining
The immunocytochemical staining of eukaryotic plasmid cells was conducted with the method used in previous articles [
3,
22]. The cultured cells were fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde. 0.25% TritonX-100/PBS was used for permeabilization. The samples were blocked in 1% FBS/PBS, and incubated with primary antibody and Rhodamine fluorophores conjugated secondary antibodies. Counterstaining with DAPI, the fluorescence was observed under the inverted fluorescence microscope, then images were captured.
Pulse-chase analysis
After cell transfection for 24-36 h, each well was added with 100 μg/mL CHX (cycloheximide, CHX). Cells were collected at 0 h, 1 h, 2 h and 3.5 h after the addition of CHX. Total protein was extracted for Western analysis to detect the degradation of the interested protein.
Statistical analysis
All statistical data were calculated and analyzed using SPSS Statistics 13.0 software. All error bars were expressed as mean ± s.d.. The statistical significance of differences was evaluated by one-way ANOVA, followed by student’s t-test.
Discussion
The dynamic changes of protein play a key role in life, as they can achieve the physiological function through various post-translational modifications, among which, reversible protein phosphorylation is a common and crucial one. In mammals, there are about 30% of the proteins going on with phosphorylation process. A variety of biological processes are closely related to post-translational protein phosphorylation, which has been playing an on/off regulation in numerous biochemical functions, such as transcriptional regulation, signal transduction, DNA repair, apoptosis regulation. Therefore, the phosphorylation of proteins is an essential part in intracellular signaling transduction.
In our experiment, we used in vitro phosphorylation studies to exclude the possibilities of PINK1 phosphorylated by other proteins, adopted a liquid chromatography mass spectrometry to identify the Ser465 site as the PINK1 protein autophosphorylation site. Since phosphorylation is a reversible process, the loss of phosphate groups was possible under the experimental conditions. In addition, the phosphorylated peptides were relatively little compared with non-phosphorylated peptides, which could be concealed easily when identified in the mass spectrometry, leading to the false negative results. Therefore, besides Ser465 site, there may be other unidentified PINK1 autophosphorylation sites.
In order to identify whether Ser465 was the PINK1 autophosphorylation site or not, we firstly constructed Ser465 autophosphorylation silent type pGEX-5X-1-PINK1-S465A, replacing the serine residue (S) with alanine residue (A) which cannot be phosphorylated, using the site-directed mutagenesis. After Ser465 being silenced, the PINK1 protein autophosphorylation level was decreased, but not completely blocked, indicating that Ser465 is just one of the PINK1 autophosphorylation sites.
Our study found that the inactivation of Ser465 can down-regulate the kinase activity of PINK1. Together with Ser465A, T313 M and R492X mutant PINK1 also decrease kinase activity in vitro, both of which are disease-causing mutations of PINK1, implying that decreased kinase activity may contribute to PD. However, experiments in vitro cannot fully simulate the phosphorylation process of eukaryotic cells in vivo, and the specific mechanism remains to be further studied.
When we transfected two pKH3-PINK1 mutants in HEK293 cells, HA-PINK1-S465A and HA-PINK1-S465D, there were no significant changes of subcellular localization of PINK1, still displaying the mitochondrial localization. These results suggest that the Ser465 site has no effect on PINK1 subcellular localization. PINK1 protein is an integral membrane protein, mainly located in the mitochondria. It has already shown that PINK1 protein localizes in mitochondria cristae, and both wild-type and mutant (outside the mitochondrial localization domain) PINK1 protein distribute in the same way in cells, indicating that PINK1 mutation outside the mitochondrial localization domain does not affect its subcellular localization [
12]. As a mitochondrial-located kinase, PINK1 plays a key role in maintaining the normal function of mitochondria and protecting the mitochondria from oxidative stress.
Our study found that Ser465 phosphorylation was also related to the PINK1 degradation. Both disabled or excessive PINK1 phosphorylation can slow down the PINK1 degradation, increase the intracellular concentration of PINK1. A proper concentration of PINK1 is required to maintain mitochondrial homeostasis. Most studies have found that PINK1 mainly maintains normal mitochondrial morphology and function, reduces mitochondrial dysfunction under stress, inhibits apoptosis, and is a neuron protective protein ([
1,
4,
5,
13,
15]). Some studies have demonstrated that PINK1 protein degrades primarily by the ubiquitin-proteasome degradation pathway, but so far the related E3 ligase in the pathway remains unclear [
16,
19,
23], which may be associated with the PINK1 autophosphorylation.
Our study also investigated the influence of PINK1 autophosphorylation on Parkin. Both wild-type PINK1 protein and S465D mutant protein can promote the transfer of Parkin to clustered mitochondria, while S465A, T313 M, R492X mutant PINK1 had a relatively weaker role in the interaction with Parkin. S465A mutant can disable the autophosphorylation of PINK1, repressing the transfer process; While mutant S465D possesses the phosphorylation ability, completing the same process as the wild-type protein. We can infer that PINK1 autophosphorylation contributes to the transit of Parkin to mitochondria. For the S465A, T313 M and R492X mutant protein, the inhibition of transfer process may be related to the reduced kinase activity. Some studies[10] have also confirmed that PINK1 can phosphorylate Parkin and jointly transfer to the mitochondria, which were gathered in clusters around the nucleus. The decreased kinase activity of these mutant PINK1 proteins may lead to the abnormal physiological processes.