Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to recombinant movement protein (MP REC ) of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) were used to reveal the dependence of MP epitope accessibility to mAbs on subcellular MP localization and post-translational MP phosphorylation. Leaves of Nicotiana benthamiana or N. tabacum were inoculated mechanically with TMV or agroinjected with an MP expression vector. At different time post-inoculation, ER membrane-and cell wall-enriched fractions (ER-MP and CW-MP, respectively) were isolated and analysed. The N-terminal region (residues 1-30) as well as regions 186-222 and 223-257 of MP from the CW and ER fractions were accessible for interaction with mAbs. By contrast, the MP regions including residues 76-89 and 98-129 were not accessible. The C-terminal TMV MP region (residues 258-268) was inaccessible to mAbs not only in CW-MP, but also in ER-MP fractions. Evidence is presented that phosphorylation of the majority of TMV MP C-terminal sites occurred on ER membranes at an early stage of virus infection, i.e. not after, but before reaching the cell wall. C-terminal phosphorylation of purified MP REC abolished recognition of C-proximal residues 258-268 by specific mAbs, which could be restored by MP dephosphorylation. Likewise, accessibility to mAbs of the C-terminal MP epitope in ER-MP and CW-MP leaf fractions was restored by dephosphorylation. Substitution of three or four C-terminal Ser/Thr residues with nonphosphorylatable Ala also resulted in abolition of interaction of mAbs with MP.
INTRODUCTIONThe movement protein (MP) of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) facilitates movement of the virus genome within and between cells (for reviews, see Citovsky, 1999;Heinlein & Epel, 2004;Lucas, 2006). Polyfunctional TMV MP plays a key role in virus infection. It increases the size exclusion limit of plasmodesmata (PD) (Tomenius et al., 1987;Deom et al., 1987;Wolf et al., 1989), serves as an anchor of the viral genomic RNA to the ER (Mas & Beachy, 1999) and plays an important role in intracellular transport of replication complexes Kawakami et al., 2004). Unlike other TMV proteins, the MP is produced transiently in the early stages of virus infection (Watanabe et al., 1984;Lehto et al., 1990). Within the infected cell, MP is synthesized at the leading edge and degraded at the trailing edge of the infection site (Padgett et al., 1996). Polyubiquitination of MP and subsequent degradation by the 26S proteasome pathway occurs after the early stages of infection (Reichel & Beachy, 2000). However, the mechanisms responsible for the regulation of transient MP expression are not clear.Post-translational modifications, in particular phosphorylation/dephosphorylation, are important in regulation of gene expression and protein activity. It is known that, during virus infection, TMV MP undergoes phosphorylation by a cellular protein kinase(s). It has been shown that multiple phosphorylation events in internal regions of TMV MP occur in TMV-infected protoplasts (Haley et al., 1995). On the other hand, only three C-terminal residues o...