PPP-family phosphatases such as PP1 have little intrinsic specificity. Cofactors can target PP1 to substrates or subcellular locations, but it remains unclear how they might confer sequence-specificity on PP1. The cytoskeletal regulator Phactr1 is a neuronally enriched PP1 cofactor that is controlled by G-actin. Structural analysis showed that Phactr1 binding remodels PP1's hydrophobic groove, creating a new composite surface adjacent to the catalytic site. Using phosphoproteomics, we identified mouse fibroblast and neuronal Phactr1/PP1 substrates, which include cytoskeletal components and regulators. We determined high-resolution structures of Phactr1/PP1 bound to the dephosphorylated forms of its substrates IRSp53 and spectrin αII. Inversion of the phosphate in these holoenzyme-product complexes supports the proposed PPP-family catalytic mechanism. Substrate sequences C-terminal to the dephosphorylation site make intimate contacts with the composite Phactr1/PP1 surface, which are required for efficient dephosphorylation. Sequence specificity explains why Phactr1/PP1 exhibits orders-of-magnitude enhanced reactivity towards its substrates, compared to apo-PP1 or other PP1 holoenzymes.
Keywords: IRSp53; Phactr1; Protein Phosphatase 1; RPEL; actin; biochemistry; chemical biology; cytoskeleton; molecular biophysics; mouse; structural biology.
Specific arrangements of atoms such as bulky phosphate groups can change the activity of a protein and how it interacts with other molecules. Enzymes called kinases are responsible for adding these groups onto a protein, while phosphatases remove them. Kinases are generally specific for a small number of proteins, adding phosphate groups only at sites embedded in a particular sequence in the target protein. Phosphatases, however, are generalists: only a few different types exist, which exhibit little target sequence specificity. Partner proteins can attach to phosphatases to bring the enzymes to specific locations in the cell, or to deliver target proteins to them; yet, it is unclear whether partner binding could also change the structure of the enzyme so the phosphatase can recognise only a restricted set of targets. To investigate this, Fedoryshchak, Přechová et al. studied a phosphatase called PP1 and its partner, Phactr1. First, the structure of the Phactr1/PP1 complex was examined using biochemistry approaches and X-ray crystallography. This showed that binding of Phactr1 to PP1 creates a new surface pocket, which comprised elements of both proteins. In particular, this composite pocket is located next to the part of the PP1 enzyme responsible for phosphate removal. Next, mass spectrometry and genetics methods were harnessed to identify and characterise the targets of the Phactr1/PP1 complex. Structural analysis of the proteins most susceptible to Phactr1/PP1 activity showed that they had particular sequences that could interact with Phactr1/PP1’s composite pocket. Further experiments revealed that, compared to PP1 acting alone, the pocket increased the binding efficiency and reactivity of the complex 100-fold. This work demonstrates that a partner protein can make phosphatases more sequence-specific, suggesting that future studies could adopt a similar approach to examine how other enzymes in this family perform their role. In addition, the results suggest that it will be possible to design Phactr1/PP1-specific drugs that act on the composite pocket. This would represent an important proof of principle, since current phosphatase-specific drugs do not target particular phosphatase complexes.
© 2020, Fedoryshchak et al.