Figure 3. Direct binding of exposed ER-trafficked protein sequences to the DR5 ECD is sufficient to induce oligomerization.
(A) A peptide array tiled with sequences from the ectodomain of myelin protein zero (MPZ) and extracellular loops from rhodopsin (RHO) was incubated with Fc-tagged DR5 ectodomain domain (long isoform, 500 nM). Signal was obtained by probing with anti-Fc. (B) Coomassie stained SDS-PAGE gel of pulldown on Fc-tagged DR5L ECD (55 kDa) or TNFR1 ECD (65 kDa) incubated with increasing concentrations of the MPZ-ectoVD peptide (apparent MW of 10 kDa, see 'Amino acid sequences of MPZ-derived peptides' for sequence). (C) Fluorescence quenching of AlexaFluor647-DR5L (green) or TNFR1 ECD (blue) was measured with increasing MPZ-ecto peptide to quantify the binding affinity, whereas quenching was not observed with the mutated MPZ-ectoTyr→Glu peptide (magenta) (N = 3, error bars are SD). DR5L ECD binds to the MPZ-ecto peptide with a K1/2 of 109 ± 11 μM with a hill coefficient of 2.6 ± 0.5. (D) SDS-PAGE of recombinant FLAG-tagged DR5L ECD (25 kDa, 10 μM) incubated with MPZ-ecto peptide at the noted concentrations and treated with the amine crosslinker BS3 (100 μM), probed with anti-FLAG. (E) Size exclusion chromatographs of absorbance at 280 nm for 25 μM recombinant DR5L ECD alone (black), pre-incubated with 100 μM fluorescein-conjugated MPZ-ecto peptide (green) or 100 μM fluorescein-conjugated MPZ-ectoTyr→Glu peptide (magenta). (F) SDS-PAGE gels scanned for fluorescence and then stained with Coomassie for eluted size exclusion fractions in (E). Green outlines (top pair) correspond to fractions from DR5L pre-incubated with MPZ-ecto peptide, and magenta outlines (bottom pair) correspond to DR5L with MPZ-ectoTyr→Glu peptide. Lane marked by “-“ denotes a blank lane between the input and 7 ml fraction to minimize spillover of signal from input sample. Arrowheads mark detectable peptide fluorescence in the indicated fractions.