Link to bioRxiv paper:
http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.07.15.549172v1?rss=1

Authors: Zheng, J.-X., Du, T.-Y., Shao, G.-C., Ma, Z.-H., Jiang, Z.-D., Hu, W., Suo, F., He, W., Dong, M.-Q., Du, L.-L.

Abstract:
Killer meiotic drivers (KMDs) skew allele transmission in their favor by killing meiotic progeny not inheriting the driver allele. Despite their widespread presence in eukaryotes, the molecular mechanisms behind their selfish behavior are poorly understood. Here we investigate how the poison and antidote products of a fission yeast wtf-family KMD gene can act antagonistically. Both the poison and the antidote are multi-transmembrane proteins, differing only in their N-terminal cytosolic tails. We find that the antidote employs N-terminal PY motifs to bind Rsp5/NEDD4 family ubiquitin ligases, which ubiquitinate the antidote. Mutating PY motifs or attaching a deubiquitinating enzyme transforms the antidote into a toxic protein. Ubiquitination promotes the transport of the antidote from the trans-Golgi network to the endosome, thereby neutralizing its toxicity and that of the bound poison. We propose that post-translational modification-mediated protein localization and/or activity changes may be a common mechanism governing the antagonistic duality of single-gene KMDs.

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