NMR study of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Air2 protein

H. Černá, M. Sanudo, R. Štefl

National Centre for Biomolecular Research

Masaryk University, Faculty of Science, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic

The Air2 protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an RNA-binding subunit of the Trf4–Air2–Mtr4 polyadenylation (TRAMP) complex. This complex plays an important role in the nuclear RNA-surveillance machinery. It adds short poly(A) tails to aberrant or misfolded RNA transcripts and thus promote their degradation by the nuclear exosome. It is suggested that the Air2 protein is involved in the RNA substrate recognition, as it contains five consecutive zinc knuckles–these domains are well known to bind nucleic acids. Here we present the biochemical and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies of the five zinc-knuckles construct of Air2.