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Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on February 1, 2006.
Genetics, Vol. 172, 2253-2267, April 2006, Copyright © 2006
doi:10.1534/genetics.105.053637
The C Terminus of Collagen SQT-3 Has Complex and Essential Functions in Nematode Collagen Assembly
Jacopo Novelli*,
Antony P. Page
and
Jonathan Hodgkin*,1
* Genetics Unit, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QU, United Kingdom and Institute of Comparative Medicine, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Glasgow G61 1QH, United Kingdom
1 Corresponding author: Genetics Unit, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, South Parks Rd., Oxford OX1 3QU, United Kingdom.
E-mail: jonathan.hodgkin{at}bioch.ox.ac.uk
The nematode exoskeleton is a multilayered structure secreted by the underlying hypodermal cells and mainly composed of small collagens, which are encoded by a large gene family. In previous work, we reported analysis of the C. elegans dpy-31 locus, encoding a hypodermally expressed zinc-metalloprotease of the BMP-1/TOLLOID family essential for viability and cuticle deposition. We have generated a large set of extragenic suppressors of dpy-31 lethality, most of which we show here to be allelic to the cuticle collagen genes sqt-3 and dpy-17. We analyzed the interaction among dpy-31, sqt-3, and dpy-17 using a SQT-3-specific antiserum, which was employed in immunofluorescence experiments. Our results support a role for DPY-31 in SQT-3 extracellular processing and suggest that the SQT-3 C-terminal nontrimeric region serves multiple roles during SQT-3 assembly. Different missense mutations of this region have diverse phenotypic consequences, including cold-sensitive lethality. Furthermore, the biochemical and genetic data indicate that the extracellular assemblies of DPY-17 and SQT-3 are interdependent, most likely because the collagens are incorporated into the same cuticular substructure. We find that absence of DPY-17 causes extensive intracellular retention of SQT-3, indicating that formation of the SQT-3–DPY-17 polymer could begin in the intracellular environment before secretion.
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