Protein degradation via the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) is one of the cell's tools for selective negative regulation of intracellular proteins. Degradation via the UPS has roles in maintaining protein quality control, signaling, and cell cycle progression [
1,
2]. Ubiquitin is a small protein that is highly conserved in eukaryotes and is the crux of the UPS system. The UPS system is built upon three classes of enzymes--E1, E2 and E3- that act sequentially to build ubiquitin chains on protein substrates. Once a protein substrate has been modified by a chain of at least four ubiquitins, it is then degraded by the 26S proteasome in an ATP-dependent manner [
3,
4].
The proteasome is a 33-subunit protein complex that is involved in turning over a minimum of 20% of the yeast proteome (SCUD;
http://scud.kaist.ac.kr/index.html). Other lines of evidence suggest that the vast majority of cytoplasmic protein degradation is mediated by the proteasome [
5]. The proteasome is composed of two main components: a 20S catalytic core particle (CP) and a 19S regulatory particle (RP). The 19S regulatory particle can be dissected into two sub-complexes, the lid and the base. The base sub-complex is composed of two non-ATPase subunits, Rpn1 and Rpn2, as well as six ATPase subunits (Rpt1 to 6) that are thought to unfold and feed substrate into the CP.
How ubiquitylated substrates converge onto the proteasome is an active area of research that has been studied with the greatest depth in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae. So far, at least two independent mechanisms have been discovered. In the first case, the yeast proteasome contains two intrinsic receptors, Rpn10 and Rpn13, that contain defined ubiquitin binding domains [
6,
7]. Mammalian proteasomes contain a third intrinsic receptor, Rpt5 [
8]. Rpn10 contains a highly conserved ubiquitin interaction motif (UIM), whereas Rpn13 binds ubiquitin via a pleckstrin motif that was not previously known to interact with ubiquitin [
6,
7]. Although neither Rpn10 nor Rpn13 is essential,
rpn10Δ and
rpn13Δ mutants exhibit phenotypes consistent with a role for these proteins in the docking of substrates to the proteasome. Rpt5 can be cross-linked to ubiquitin chains, but the means by which it binds ubiquitin and the genetic significance of this activity remain to be determined. Substrates may be able to bind the proteasome directly via these three intrinsic receptors.
In the second mode of delivery to the proteasome, receptors, including the budding yeast Rad23, Dsk2, and Ddi1 proteins, contain an N-terminal ubiquitin like domain (UBL) that binds to the proteasome and a C- terminal ubiquitin association domain (UBA) that binds to ubiquitin chains [
9-
12]. Unlike Rpn10 and Rpn13, these proteins are not stoichiometric subunits of the proteasome. Instead, it is thought that this class of proteins rapidly cycles on and off the proteasome [
13], serving as 'shuttle' receptors that bind substrates in the cytoplasm and nucleus and deliver them to the proteasome. The UBA-UBL proteins dock at the proteasome by binding the largest subunit of the proteasome, Rpn1 [
12,
14,
15], although recent evidence suggests that the UBA-UBL proteins also bind other subunits within the proteasome. For example, multiple lines of evidence suggest that in yeast Dsk2 may also be able to interact with Rpn10 and Rpn13, and yeast Rad23 may also bind Rpt6 [
7,
16-
18]. Human Rad23 is also able to bind both human Rpn10 and Rpn13 [
7] and in an NMR experiment, binding of yeast Rad23 to Rpn10 was observed [
18].
While it is clear that substrates can use two different mechanisms to engage the proteasome, we still do not understand how substrates are allocated to one targeting pathway or the other. While there is evidence that some protein substrates utilize both the intrinsic and shuttling receptors [
19], some proteasomal substrates are entirely dependent on either Rpn10 or Rad23 [
20]. Moreover, although Rpn10 and Rpn13 are undoubtedly important receptors, electron microscopy and quantitative mass spectrometry data suggest that there are two populations of proteasomes, those containing and those not containing the intrinsic receptors [
21-
23]. Furthermore, deletion of
RPN10 or
RPN13 does not lead to profound deficits in cellular protein degradation [
6,
7,
24]. Finally, while highly conserved [
25], the UBA-UBL proteins are not essential for yeast cell growth [
24,
26,
27]. Thus, although the proteasome itself is essential, none of the receptors that link substrates to the proteasome (with the exception of Rpt5) is essential. This has led to the assumption that targeting of substrates to the proteasome occurs by multiple, partially redundant mechanisms. Obtaining a clear understanding of how each pathway contributes to substrate recognition by the proteasome is of considerable importance given the central role of the UPS in regulatory biology and the clinical significance of the proteasome as a target for cancer therapy [
28,
29].
Rpn1, the largest subunit of the proteasome, contains nine repeat segments, known as leucine rich repeats (LRR), which adopt horseshoe-shaped structures that are thought to be generally important for protein-protein interactions [
30]. The LRR domain of Rpn1 is thought to form a slightly open monomeric α-solenoid [
31,
32]. The first five contiguous repeat segments constitute LRR1, whereas the next four contiguous LRR repeats form LRR2. A 134 acidic amino acid stretch links LRR1 and LRR2 [
15,
33]. The minimal region sufficient for Rad23 binding to Rpn1 has been mapped to residues 417 to 628, which comprise LRR1 and an adjacent 21-residue acidic stretch on the C-terminal side. The UBL domains of Dsk2 and Ddi1 have also been shown to interact with the LRR domain of Rpn1 [
14,
15,
34-
36].
To gain a better understanding of how substrate delivery to the proteasome is controlled, we sought to identify an Rpn1 mutant that is defective in binding the UBA-UBL receptor proteins. We identified two mutations that disrupted binding of the UBA-UBL protein Ddi1 to the proteasome. Docking of Dsk2 to the proteasome was also moderately affected by these mutations in some genetic backgrounds. The delivery of ubiquitin conjugates to the proteasome was diminished in an rpn1-D517A single and even more so in an rpn13Δ rpn1-D517A double mutant. Lastly, we show that the rpn1-D517A mutation stabilizes the Ddi1 substrate, Ufo1.