TY - JOUR
T1 - A degron-based strategy reveals new insights into Aurora B function in C. elegans
AU - Divekar, Nikita S.
AU - Davis-Roca, Amanda C.
AU - Zhang, Liangyu
AU - Dernburg, Abby F.
AU - Wignall, Sarah M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2021 Divekar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2021/4/1
Y1 - 2021/4/1
N2 - The widely conserved kinase Aurora B regulates important events during cell division. Surprisingly, recent work has uncovered a few functions of Aurora-family kinases that do not require kinase activity. Thus, understanding this important class of cell cycle regulators will require strategies to distinguish kinase-dependent from independent functions. Here, we address this need in C. elegans by combining germline-specific, auxin-induced Aurora B (AIR-2) degradation with the transgenic expression of kinase-inactive AIR-2. Through this approach, we find that kinase activity is essential for AIR-2’s major meiotic functions and also for mitotic chromosome segregation. Moreover, our analysis revealed insight into the assembly of the ring complex (RC), a structure that is essential for chromosome congression in C. elegans oocytes. AIR-2 localizes to chromosomes and recruits other components to form the RC. However, we found that while kinase-dead AIR-2 could load onto chromosomes, other components were not recruited. This failure in RC assembly appeared to be due to a loss of RC SUMOylation, suggesting that there is crosstalk between SUMOylation and phosphorylation in building the RC and implicating AIR-2 in regulating the SUMO pathway in oocytes. Similar conditional depletion approaches may reveal new insights into other cell cycle regulators.
AB - The widely conserved kinase Aurora B regulates important events during cell division. Surprisingly, recent work has uncovered a few functions of Aurora-family kinases that do not require kinase activity. Thus, understanding this important class of cell cycle regulators will require strategies to distinguish kinase-dependent from independent functions. Here, we address this need in C. elegans by combining germline-specific, auxin-induced Aurora B (AIR-2) degradation with the transgenic expression of kinase-inactive AIR-2. Through this approach, we find that kinase activity is essential for AIR-2’s major meiotic functions and also for mitotic chromosome segregation. Moreover, our analysis revealed insight into the assembly of the ring complex (RC), a structure that is essential for chromosome congression in C. elegans oocytes. AIR-2 localizes to chromosomes and recruits other components to form the RC. However, we found that while kinase-dead AIR-2 could load onto chromosomes, other components were not recruited. This failure in RC assembly appeared to be due to a loss of RC SUMOylation, suggesting that there is crosstalk between SUMOylation and phosphorylation in building the RC and implicating AIR-2 in regulating the SUMO pathway in oocytes. Similar conditional depletion approaches may reveal new insights into other cell cycle regulators.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106361896&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85106361896&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009567
DO - 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009567
M3 - Article
C2 - 34014923
AN - SCOPUS:85106361896
SN - 1553-7390
VL - 17
JO - PLoS genetics
JF - PLoS genetics
IS - 4
M1 - e1009567
ER -
