Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on November 27, 2006
Nucleic Acids Research 2006 34(22):6496-6504; doi:10.1093/nar/gkl877
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2006, Vol. 34, No. 22 6496-6504
© 2006 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Molecular Biology |
The Agrobacterium VirE3 effector protein: a potential plant transcriptional activator
Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University Clusius laboratorium. Wassenaarseweg 64, 2333 AL Leiden. The Netherlands
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +3171 5274933; Fax: +5274999; Email: hooykaas{at}rulbim.leidenuniv.nl
Received January 26, 2006. Revised September 27, 2006. Accepted October 8, 2006.
During the infection of plants, Agrobacterium tumefaciens introduces several Virulence proteins including VirE2, VirF, VirD5 and VirE3 into plant cells in addition to the T-DNA. Here, we report that double mutation of virF and virE3 leads to strongly diminished tumor formation on tobacco, tomato and sunflower. The VirE3 protein is translated from a polycistronic mRNA containing the virE1, virE2 and virE3 genes, in Agrobacterium. The VirE3 protein has nuclear localization sequences, which suggests that it is transported into the plant cell nucleus upon translocation. Indeed we show here that VirE3 interacts in vitro with importin-
and that a VirE3–GFP fusion protein is localized in the nucleus. VirE3 also interacts with two other proteins, viz. pCsn5, a component of the COP9 signalosome and pBrp, a plant specific general transcription factor belonging to the TFIIB family. We found that VirE3 is able to induce transcription in yeast when bound to DNA through the GAL4-BD. Our data indicate that the translocated effector protein VirE3 is transported into the nucleus and there it may interact with the transcription factor pBrp to induce the expression of genes needed for tumor development.
Present address: Fernando M. García-Rodríguez, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Estación Experimental del Zaidín. Profesor Albareda 1, 18008 Granada, Spain
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