Defining roles of PARKIN and ubiquitin phosphorylation by PINK1 in mitochondrial quality control using a ubiquitin replacement strategy

Abstract

The PTEN-induced putative kinase protein 1 (PINK1) and ubiquitin (UB) ligase PARKIN direct damaged mitochondria for mitophagy. PINK1 promotes PARKIN recruitment to the mitochondrial outer membrane (MOM) for ubiquitylation of MOM proteins with canonical and noncanonical UB chains. PINK1 phosphorylates both Ser65 (S65) in the UB-like domain of PARKIN and the conserved Ser in UB itself, but the temporal sequence and relative importance of these events during PARKIN activation and mitochondria quality control remain poorly understood. Using "UB S65A-replacement," we find that PARKIN phosphorylation and activation, and ubiquitylation of Lys residues on a cohort of MOM proteins, occur similarly irrespective of the ability of the UB-replacement to be phosphorylated on S65. In contrast, polyubiquitin (poly-UB) chain synthesis, PARKIN retention on the MOM, and mitophagy are reduced in UB S65A -replacement cells. Analogous experiments examining roles of individual UB chain linkage types revealed the importance of K6 and K63 chain linkages in mitophagy, but phosphorylation of K63 chains by PINK1 did not enhance binding to candidate mitophagy receptors optineurin (OPTN), sequestosome-1 (p62), and nuclear dot protein 52 (NDP52) in vitro. Parallel reaction monitoring proteomics of total mitochondria revealed the absence of p-S65-UB when PARKIN cannot build UB chains, and <0.16% of the monomeric UB pool underwent S65 phosphorylation upon mitochondrial damage. Combining p-S65-UB and p-S65-PARKIN in vitro showed accelerated transfer of nonphosphorylated UB to PARKIN itself, its substrate mitochondrial Rho GTPase (MIRO), and UB. Our data further define a feed-forward mitochondrial ubiquitylation pathway involving PARKIN activation upon phosphorylation, UB chain synthesis on the MOM, UB chain phosphorylation, and further PARKIN recruitment and enzymatic amplification via binding to phosphorylated UB chains.he RING-Between-RING ubiquitin (UB) ligase PARKIN and the PTEN-induced putative kinase protein 1 (PINK1), both of which are mutated in Parkinson's disease, promote ubiquitylation of numerous outer membrane proteins on damaged mitochondria, which facilitates mitophagy (1). When mitochondria are healthy, cytoplasmic PARKIN is thought to be in an unphosphorylated and auto-inhibited state (2-6). Upon mitochondrial damage, PINK1 is stabilized on the mitochondrial outer membrane (MOM) and promotes phosphorylation of both Ser65 (S65) on PARKIN's UB-like (UBL) domain and the conserved S65 residue in UB itself, which is 62% similar to PARKIN's UBL (1,(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14). PARKIN is also retained on the mitochondrial surface and ubiquitylates numerous MOM proteins through the formation of both canonical and noncanonical UB chains. The order of events, as well as the precise roles of UB and PARKIN phosphorylation, is poorly defined, and multiple models have been proposed. All models agree that PARKIN activation reverses auto-inhibition but differ in the mechanism and role of p-S65-UB (8,(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)). In one model, binding...

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