Small protein 26 interacts and enhances glutamine synthetase activity in Methanosarcina mazei

Small ORFs (sORF) encoded small proteins have been overlooked for a long time due to challenges in prediction and distinguishing between coding and non-coding predicted sORFs and in their biochemical detection and characterization. We report on the first biochemical and functional characterization of a small protein (sP26) in the archaeal model organism Methanosarcina mazei, comprising 23 amino acids. The corresponding encoding leaderless mRNA (spRNA26) is highly conserved within numerous Methanosarcina strains on the amino acid as well as on nucleotide level strongly arguing for a cellular function of the small protein. spRNA26 is significantly enhanced under nitrogen limitation, but also under oxygen and salt stress conditions. His-tagged sP26 was heterologously expressed and purified by fractionated ammonium sulfate precipitation, affinity chromatography and size exclusion centrifugation. Using independent biochemical approaches (pull-down by affinity chromatography followed by MS analysis, revers pull-down, microscale thermophoresis and size exclusion chromatography) we observed that sP26 interacts and forms complexes with M. mazei glutamine synthetase (GlnA1) with high affinity (app. KD = 45 +/- 14 [mu]M). Upon interaction with sP26, GlnA1 activity was significantly stimulated independently and in addition to the known activation by the metabolite 2-oxoglutarate. Besides strong interaction of sP26 with the PII-like protein GlnK1 was demonstrated (KD= 1.4 [mu]M +/- 0.9 [mu]M). On the basis of these findings, we hypothesize that in addition to 2-oxoglutarate, sP26 activates GlnA1 activity under nitrogen limitation most likely by stabilizing the dodecameric structure of GlnA1.