Identification and structure-guided development of triazole urea-based selective antagonists of Arabidopsis karrikin signaling

Jianwen Wang, Ikuo Takahashi, Ko Kikuzato, Toshihiko Sakai, Zhangliang Zhu, Kai Jiang, Hidemitsu Nakamura, Takeshi Nakano, Masaru Tanokura, Takuya Miyakawa () and Tadao Asami ()
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Jianwen Wang: The University of Tokyo
Ikuo Takahashi: The University of Tokyo
Ko Kikuzato: The University of Tokyo
Toshihiko Sakai: The University of Tokyo
Zhangliang Zhu: The University of Tokyo
Kai Jiang: The University of Tokyo
Hidemitsu Nakamura: The University of Tokyo
Takeshi Nakano: Kyoto University
Masaru Tanokura: The University of Tokyo
Takuya Miyakawa: The University of Tokyo
Tadao Asami: The University of Tokyo

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract The smoke-derived butenolides, karrikins (KARs), regulate many aspects of plant growth and development. However, KARs and a plant hormone, strigolactones (SLs), have high resemblance in signal perception and transduction, making it hard to delineate KARs response due to the shortage of chemical-genetic tools. Here, we identify a triazole urea KK181N1 as an inhibitor of the KARs receptor KAI2. KK181N1 selectively depress the KAR-induced phenotypes in Arabidopsis. We further elucidate the antagonistic, KAI2 binding mechanism of KK181N1, showing that KK181N1 binds to the catalytic pockets of KAI2 in a non-covalent binding manner. Our experiments also demonstrate the binding affinity of triazole urea compounds are regulated by the structured water molecule networks. By fine-tuning this network, we successfully develop a more potent derivative of KK181N1. We anticipate that these chemicals will be applicable to the elucidation of KARs biology, especially for discriminating the molecular and physiological aspects of KARs and SL signaling.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-54801-1

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