Nucleic acid transport in plant-pathogen interactions

Plant enzymes but not Agrobacterium VirD2 mediate T-DNA ligation in vitro

Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a gram-negative soil bacterium, transfers DNA to many plant species. In the plant cell, the transferred DNA (T-DNA) is integrated into the genome. An in vitro ligation-integration assay has been designed to investigate the mechanism of T-DNA ligation and the factors involved in this process. The VirD2 protein, which is produced in Agrobacterium and is covalently attached to T-DNA, did not, under our assay conditions, ligate T-DNA to a model target sequence in vitro. We tested whether plant extracts could ligate T-DNA to target oligonucleotides in our test system. The in vitro ligation-integration reaction did indeed take place in the presence of plant extracts. This reaction was inhibited by dTTP, indicating involvement of a plant DNA ligase. We found that prokaryotic DNA ligases could substitute for plant extracts in this reaction. Ligation of the VirD2-bound oligonucleotide to the target sequence mediated by T4 DNA ligase was less efficient than ligation of a free oligonucleotide to the target. T-DNA ligation mediated by a plant enzyme(s) or T4 DNA ligase requires ATP.

Import of DNA into mammalian nuclei by proteins originating from a plant pathogenic bacterium

Import of DNA into mammalian nuclei is generally inefficient. Therefore, one of the current challenges in human gene therapy is the development of efficient DNA delivery systems. Here we tested whether bacterial proteins could be used to target DNA to mammalian cells. Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a plant pathogen, efficiently transfers DNA as a nucleoprotein complex to plant cells. Agrobacterium-mediated T-DNA transfer to plant cells is the only known example for interkingdom DNA transfer and is widely used for plant transformation. Agrobacterium virulence proteins VirD2 and VirE2 perform important functions in this process. We reconstituted complexes consisting of the bacterial virulence proteins VirD2, VirE2, and single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) in vitro. These complexes were tested for import into HeLa cell nuclei. Import of ssDNA required both VirD2 and VirE2 proteins. A VirD2 mutant lacking its C-terminal nuclear localization signal was deficient in import of the ssDNA-protein complexes into nuclei. Import of VirD2-ssDNA-VirE2 complexes was fast and efficient, and was shown to depended on importin alpha, Ran, and an energy source. We report here that the bacterium-derived and plant-adapted protein-DNA complex, made in vitro, can be efficiently imported into mammalian nuclei following the classical importin-dependent nuclear import pathway. This demonstrates the potential of our approach to enhance gene transfer to animal cells.