The B motif is a signature of type-B response regulators (ARRs) involved in His-to-Asp phosphorelay signal transduction systems in Arabidopsis. Homologous motifs occur widely in the GARP family of plant transcription factors. To gain general insight into the structure and function of B motifs (or GARP motifs), we characterized the B motif derived from a representative ARR, ARR10, which led to a number of intriguing findings. First, the B motif of ARR10 (named ARR10-B and extending from Thr-179 to Ser-242) possesses a nuclear localization signal, as indicated by the intracellular localization of a green fluorescent protein-ARR10-B fusion protein in onion epidermal cells. Second, the purified ARR10-B molecule binds specifically in vitro to DNA with the core sequence AGATT. This was demonstrated by several in vitro approaches, including PCR-assisted DNA binding site selection, gel retardation assays, and surface plasmon resonance analysis. Finally, the three-dimensional structure of ARR10-B in solution was determined by NMR spectroscopy, showing that it contains a helix-turn-helix structure. Furthermore, the mode of interaction between ARR10-B and the target DNA was assessed extensively by NMR spectroscopy. Together, these results lead us to propose that the mechanism of DNA recognition by ARR10-B is essentially the same as that of homeodomains. We conclude that the B motif is a multifunctional domain responsible for both nuclear localization and DNA binding and suggest that these insights could be applicable generally to the large GARP family of plant transcription factors.

BackgroundAlthough structural domains in proteins (SDs) are important, half of the regions in the human proteome are currently left with no SD assignments. These unassigned regions consist not only of novel SDs, but also of intrinsically disordered (ID) regions since proteins, especially those in eukaryotes, generally contain a significant fraction of ID regions. As ID regions can be inferred from amino acid sequences, a method that combines SD and ID region assignments can determine the fractions of SDs and ID regions in any proteome.ResultsIn contrast to other available ID prediction programs that merely identify likely ID regions, the DICHOT system we previously developed classifies the entire protein sequence into SDs and ID regions. Application of DICHOT to the human proteome revealed that residue-wise ID regions constitute 35%, SDs with similarity to PDB structures comprise 52%, while SDs with no similarity to PDB structures account for the remaining 13%. The last group consists of novel structural domains, termed cryptic domains, which serve as good targets of structural genomics. The DICHOT method applied to the proteomes of other model organisms indicated that eukaryotes generally have high ID contents, while prokaryotes do not. In human proteins, ID contents differ among subcellular localizations: nuclear proteins had the highest residue-wise ID fraction (47%), while mitochondrial proteins exhibited the lowest (13%). Phosphorylation and O-linked glycosylation sites were found to be located preferentially in ID regions. As O-linked glycans are attached to residues in the extracellular regions of proteins, the modification is likely to protect the ID regions from proteolytic cleavage in the extracellular environment. Alternative splicing events tend to occur more frequently in ID regions. We interpret this as evidence that natural selection is operating at the protein level in alternative splicing.ConclusionsWe classified entire regions of proteins into the two categories, SDs and ID regions and thereby obtained various kinds of complete genome-wide statistics. The results of the present study are important basic information for understanding protein structural architectures and have been made publicly available at http://spock.genes.nig.ac.jp/~genome/DICHOT.

IDEAL, Intrinsically Disordered proteins with Extensive Annotations and Literature (http://www.ideal.force.cs.is.nagoya-u.ac.jp/IDEAL/), is a collection of knowledge on experimentally verified intrinsically disordered proteins. IDEAL contains manual annotations by curators on intrinsically disordered regions, interaction regions to other molecules, post-translational modification sites, references and structural domain assignments. In particular, IDEAL explicitly describes protean segments that can be transformed from a disordered state to an ordered state. Since in most cases they can act as molecular recognition elements upon binding of partner proteins, IDEAL provides a data resource for functional regions of intrinsically disordered proteins. The information in IDEAL is provided on a user-friendly graphical view and in a computer-friendly XML format.

IDEAL (Intrinsically Disordered proteins with Extensive Annotations and Literature, http://www.ideal.force.cs.is.nagoya-u.ac.jp/IDEAL/) is a collection of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) that cannot adopt stable globular structures under physiological conditions. Since its previous publication in 2012, the number of entries in IDEAL has almost tripled (120 to 340). In addition to the increase in quantity, the quality of IDEAL has been significantly improved. The new IDEAL incorporates the interactions of IDPs and their binding partners more explicitly, and illustrates the protein–protein interaction (PPI) networks and the structures of protein complexes. Redundant experimental data are arranged based on the clustering of Protein Data Bank entries, and similar sequences with the same binding mode are grouped. As a result, the new IDEAL presents more concise and informative experimental data. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) disorder is annotated in a systematic manner, by identifying the regions with large deviations among the NMR models. The ordered/disordered and new domain predictions by DICHOT are available, as well as the domain assignments by HMMER. Some examples of the PPI networks and the highly deviated regions derived from NMR models will be described, together with other advances. These enhancements will facilitate deeper understanding of IDPs, in terms of their flexibility, plasticity and promiscuity.