TY - JOUR T1 - Real-time detection of PRT1-mediated ubiquitination via fluorescently labeled substrate probes JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/062067 SP - 062067 AU - Augustin C. Mot AU - Erik Prell AU - Maria Klecker AU - Christin Naumann AU - Frederik Faden AU - Bernhard Westermann AU - Nico Dissmeyer Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/04/062067.abstract N2 - The N-end rule pathway has emerged as a major system for controlling protein stability in medical, animal and plant sciences as well as agriculture. This included the discovery of novel functions and enzymes of the pathway. Ubiquitination mechanism and substrate specificity of bona fide N-end rule pathway E3 Ubiquitin ligases is still elusive. Taking the first discovered bone fide plant N-end rule E3 ligase PROTEOLY-SIS1 (PRT1) as a model, we describe a novel tool to molecularly characterize polyubiquitinylation live, in real-time. We demonstrate that PRT1 is indeed an E3 ligase and gain mechanistic insights in PRT1 substrate preference and activation by monitoring live ubiquitination by using a fluorescent chemical probe coupled to artificial substrate reporters. Ubiquitination can then be measured by rapid in-gel fluorescence scanning in classical end-point assays as well as in real time by fluorescence polarization in standard microplate readers. Enzymatic activity, substrate specificity, reaction mechanisms and optimization can be easily investigated ad hoc in short time and with significantly reduced reagent consumption. ER -