The Dnmt2 RNA methyltransferase homolog of Geobacter sulfurreducens specifically methylates tRNA-Glu

Shanmugam, Raghuvaran, Aklujkar, Muktak, Schäfer, Matthias, Reinhardt, Richard, Nickel, Olaf, Reuter, Gunter, Lovley, Derek R, Ehrenhofer-Murray, Ann, Nellen, Wolfgang, Ankri, Serge, Helm, Mark, Jurkowski, Tomasz P ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2012-0240 and Jeltsch, Albert 2014. The Dnmt2 RNA methyltransferase homolog of Geobacter sulfurreducens specifically methylates tRNA-Glu. Nucleic Acids Research 42 (10) , 6487—6496. 10.1093/nar/gku256

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Abstract

Dnmt2 enzymes are conserved in eukaryotes, where they methylate C38 of tRNA-Asp with high activity. Here, the activity of one of the very few prokaryotic Dnmt2 homologs from Geobacter species (GsDnmt2) was investigated. GsDnmt2 was observed to methylate tRNA-Asp from flies and mice. Unexpectedly, it had only a weak activity toward its matching Geobacter tRNA-Asp, but methylated Geobacter tRNA-Glu with good activity. In agreement with this result, we show that tRNA-Glu is methylated in Geobacter while the methylation is absent in tRNA-Asp. The activities of Dnmt2 enzymes from Homo sapiens, Drosophila melanogaster, Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Dictyostelium discoideum for methylation of the Geobacter tRNA-Asp and tRNA-Glu were determined showing that all these Dnmt2s preferentially methylate tRNA-Asp. Hence, the GsDnmt2 enzyme has a swapped transfer ribonucleic acid (tRNA) specificity. By comparing the different tRNAs, a characteristic sequence pattern was identified in the variable loop of all preferred tRNA substrates. An exchange of two nucleotides in the variable loop of murine tRNA-Asp converted it to the corresponding variable loop of tRNA-Glu and led to a strong reduction of GsDnmt2 activity. Interestingly, the same loss of activity was observed with human DNMT2, indicating that the variable loop functions as a specificity determinant in tRNA recognition of Dnmt2 enzymes.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Biosciences
Publisher:	Oxford University Press (OUP)
ISSN:	0305-1048
Date of Acceptance:	17 March 2014
Last Modified:	25 Oct 2022 13:08
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/119002

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