The Structural and Biochemical Basis for FER Receptor Kinase Early Signaling Initiation in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Accumulating evidence has indicated that receptor-like kinase (RLK) autophosphorylation and substrate phosphorylation triggered by RLK are early and essential events for RLK function. However, the structural and biochemical basis for these early events is largely unclear. Herein, we used RLK FERONIA (FER) as a model and crystallized its core kinase domain (FER-KD) in the dephosphorylated state. We found that FER-KD adopts an active conformation in its crystal structure. Moreover, FER-KD mutants with reduced or no catalytic activity also adopt an active conformation before phosphorylation. Collectively, these observations suggest that FER employs a phosphorylation-independent active state before ligand-induced phosphorylation and full activation. We further demonstrated that FER is a dual-specificity kinase and that autophosphorylation on Tyr residues lags somewhat behind Ser/Thr phosphorylation. More importantly, Tyr phosphorylation is essential for FER-KD to initiate substrate GRP7 phosphorylation. Our work provides a paradigm to study the mechanisms of the early steps of RLK signaling initiation and highlights its "active" form and Tyr phosphorylation-gated roles in response to signaling stimuli.