Journal article

Structure of Arabidopsis CESA3 catalytic domain with its substrate UDP-glucose provides insight into the mechanism of cellulose synthesis

Z Qiao, ER Lampugnani, XF Yan, GA Khan, WG Saw, P Hannah, F Qian, J Calabria, Y Miao, G Grüber, S Persson, YG Gao

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | NATL ACAD SCIENCES | Published : 2021

Abstract

Cellulose is synthesized by cellulose synthases (CESAs) from the glycosyltransferase GT-2 family. In plants, the CESAs form a sixlobed rosette-shaped CESA complex (CSC). Here we report crystal structures of the catalytic domain of Arabidopsis thaliana CESA3 (AtCESA3CatD) in both apo and uridine diphosphate (UDP)-glucose (UDP-Glc)-bound forms. AtCESA3CatDhas an overall GT-A fold core domain sandwiched between a plant-conserved region (P-CR) and a class-specific region (C-SR). By superimposing the structure of AtCESA3CatDonto the bacterial cellulose synthase BcsA, we found that the coordination of the UDP-Glc differs, indicating different substrate coordination during cellulose synthesis in pl..

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

We thank beamline scientists at National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC, Taiwan), the Swiss Light Source, and Australian Synchrotron for their technical assistance in data collection. We also thank Dr. Liew Chong Wai from the NTU Institute of Structural Biology for assistance in data collection. We would like to acknowledge the Facility for Analysis, Characterization, Testing and Simulation, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, for use of X-ray facilities. This work was supported by Tier II Grant MOE2019-T2-2-099 from the Ministry of Education of Singapore (to Y.-G.G.), Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and Discovery Project Grants DP190101941 and FT160100218 (to S.P.), Villum Investigator Grant Project ID 25915 (to S.P.), Australian Academy of Science Thomas Davies Research Grant (to E.R.L.), and Novo Nordisk Laureate Grant NNF19OC0056076 (to S.P.).