Functions of RMR proteins in intracellular trafficking in the moss "Physcomitrium patens" Mitten (previously "Physcomitrella patens")

Abstract

In this study, I focused on a new family of receptors, called RMRs (Receptor-like Membrane RING-H2) and I tried to investigate their role in the moss Physcomitrium patens Mitten (previously Physcomitrella patens). There is some evidence that in Angiosperms, RMRs are vacuolar receptors for the neutral/storage vacuole that is a compartment where storage proteins and metabolites are accumulated during seeds development or in somatic tissues. It is distinguished from lytic vacuole which has the same functions as animal lysosomes. The five PpRMR genes have been knocked-out, yielding viable material without visible phenotype (Ayachi, 2012). A trafficking phenotype was described by Fahr (2017) who generated the construct Citrine-Cardosin (Ci-Card) composed of the fluorescent protein Citrine fused to the C-terminal vacuolar sorting determinant (ctVSD) from cardosin A (cardosin is addressed to the vacuole in higher plants —Pereira et al., 2013). The fusion protein was delivered to the central vacuole of PpWT but mistargeted in PpRMR-KO lines, indicating that the targeting of this protein to the vacuole depends on PpRMRs. The introduction of this thesis presents the plant endomembrane system, with particular attention to vacuolar transport and ubiquitylation. In the second chapter, I show the techniques used to attempt to detect PpRMRs by Western Blot: our failure may be due to a rapid degradation of these proteins, which could prevent their detection. In the third chapter, I focused on PpRMR2 involvement in ubiquitylation. We hypothesize that PpRMRs are E3 ligases because they are members of the PA-TM-RING protein family. Most of these proteins have an E3 ubiquitin ligase activity in animals (Seroogy et al., 2004; Borchers et al., 2002), for this reason, we think that plant PpRMRs could have this function as well, which could contribute to vacuolar targeting. Indeed, I could confirm that PpRMR2 has an E3 ubiquitin ligase activity. PpRMRs substrates are still unknown in moss thus we have analysed putative candidates supposing that they could be ubiquitylated by PpRMRs. We have tested this hypothesis through in vitro ubiquitylation assays, obtaining ambiguous results. In the fourth chapter, I show preliminary results about the visible phenotype of PpRMR-KO mutants: PpWT and PpRMR-KO lines displayed phenotypic differences in leafy gametophores, which were accentuated upon salt stress exposure. Lastly, I transformed the transgenic lines PpWT/Ci-Card and Pp5KO/Ci-Card with mutated versions of PpRMR2 and analysed their effect on vacuolar transport by confocal microscopy. For most of the constructions tested, the trafficking was perturbed in both lines. Only PpWT/Ci-Card expressing PpRMR2ΔSer (lacking the Serine-Rich motif) displayed a typical vacuolar pattern.