Molecular Mechanism of Photozipper, a Light-Regulated Dimerizing Module Consisting of the bZIP and LOV Domains of Aureochrome-1.

Aureochrome-1 (AUREO1) is a blue light (BL) receptor responsible for the BL-induced blanching of a stramenopile alga, Vaucheria frigida. The AUREO1 protein contains a central basic region/leucine zipper (bZIP) domain, and a C-terminal light-oxygen-voltage-sensing (LOV) domain. BL induces the dimerization of monomeric AUREO1, which subsequently increases the affinity of this transcription factor for its target DNA [Hisatomi, O., et al. (2014) J. Biol. Chem. 289, 17379-17391]. We constructed a synthetic gene encoding N-terminally truncated monomeric AUREO1 (designated Photozipper) to elucidate the molecular mechanism of this BL-regulated transcription factor and to develop it as an optogenetic tool. In this study, four different Photozipper (PZ) protein constructs were prepared comprising different N-terminal truncations. The monomer-dimer equilibria of the PZ constructs were investigated in the dark and light states. Dynamic light scattering and size-exclusion chromatography analyses revealed that the apparent dissociation constants of PZ dimers with and without the ZIP region were ~100 and 30 μM, respectively, indicating that the ZIP region stabilized the monomeric form in the dark state. In the light state, fluorescence resonance energy transfer analyses demonstrated that deletion of the ZIP region increased the dissociation constant from ~0.15 to 0.6 μM, suggesting that intermolecular LOV-LOV and ZIP-ZIP interactions stabilized the dimeric forms. Our results suggest that synergistic interactions between the LOV and bZIP domains stabilize the monomeric form in the dark state and the dimeric form in the light state, which possibly contributes to the function of PZ as a BL-regulated molecular switch.