NMR resonance assignment of the cell death execution domain BELL2 from multicellular bacterial signalosomes

Abstract

Signalosomes are high-order protein machineries involved in complex mechanisms controlling regulated immune defense and cell death execution. The immune response is initiated by the recognition of exogeneous or endogenous signals, triggering the signalosome assembly process. The final step of signalosome fate often involves membrane-targeting and activation of pore-forming execution domains, leading to membrane disruption and ultimately cell death. Such cell death-inducing domains have been thoroughly characterized in plants, mammals and fungi, notably for the fungal cell death execution protein domain HeLo. However, little is known on the mechanisms of signalosome-based immune response in bacteria, and the conformation of cell death executors in bacterial signalosomes is still poorly characterized. We recently uncovered the existence of NLR signalosomes in various multicellular bacteria and used genome mining approaches to identify putative cell death executors in Streptomyces olivochromogenes. These proteins contain a C-terminal amyloid domain involved in signal transmission and a N-terminal domain, termed BELL for Bacteria analogous to fungal HeLL (HeLo-like), presumably responsible for membrane-targeting, pore-forming and cell death execution. In the present study, we report the high yield expression of S. olivochromogenes BELL2 and its characterization by solution NMR spectroscopy. BELL is folded in solution and we report backbone and sidechain assignments. We identified five α-helical secondary structure elements and a folded core much smaller than its fungal homolog HeLo. This study constitutes the first step toward the NMR investigation of the full-length protein assembly and its membrane targeting.