Phosphoregulated orthogonal signal transduction in mammalian cells

Leo Scheller, Marc Schmollack, Adrian Bertschi, Maysam Mansouri, Pratik Saxena and Martin Fussenegger ()
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Leo Scheller: ETH Zurich
Marc Schmollack: ETH Zurich
Adrian Bertschi: ETH Zurich
Maysam Mansouri: ETH Zurich
Pratik Saxena: ETH Zurich
Martin Fussenegger: ETH Zurich

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Orthogonal tools for controlling protein function by post-translational modifications open up new possibilities for protein circuit engineering in synthetic biology. Phosphoregulation is a key mechanism of signal processing in all kingdoms of life, but tools to control the involved processes are very limited. Here, we repurpose components of bacterial two-component systems (TCSs) for chemically induced phosphotransfer in mammalian cells. TCSs are the most abundant multi-component signal-processing units in bacteria, but are not found in the animal kingdom. The presented phosphoregulated orthogonal signal transduction (POST) system uses induced nanobody dimerization to regulate the trans-autophosphorylation activity of engineered histidine kinases. Engineered response regulators use the phosphohistidine residue as a substrate to autophosphorylate an aspartate residue, inducing their own homodimerization. We verify this approach by demonstrating control of gene expression with engineered, dimerization-dependent transcription factors and propose a phosphoregulated relay system of protein dimerization as a basic building block for next-generation protein circuits.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16895-1

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