Structural analysis of the Sterile alpha motif (SAM) domain of the Arabidopsis mitochondrial tRNA import receptor

Mitochondria are membrane bound organelles of endosymbiotic origin with limited protein coding capacity. As a consequence, the continual import of nuclear-encoded protein and nucleic acids such as DNA and small non-coding RNA is required and essential for maintaining organelle mass, number and activity. As plant mitochondria do not encode all the necessary tRNA types required, the import of cytosolic tRNA is vital for organelle maintenance. Recently, two mitochondrial outer membrane proteins, named Tric1 and Tric2, for tRNA import component, were shown to be involved in the import of cytosolic tRNA. Tric1/2 binds tRNAala via conserved residues in the C-terminal Sterile Alpha Motif (SAM) domain. Here we report the X-ray crystal structure of the Tric1 SAM domain. We identified the ability of the SAM domain to form a helical superstructure with 6 SAM domains per helical turn and key amino acid residues responsible for its formation. We determined that the oligomerization of Tric1 SAM domain was essential for protein function whereby mutation of Gly241 resulted in the disruption of the oligomer and the loss of RNA binding capability in Tric1. Furthermore, complementation of Arabidopsis thaliana Tric1/2 knockout lines with a mutated Tric1 failed to restore the defective plant phenotype suggesting the oligomerization is essential for function in planta. AlphaFold2 structure prediction of the SAM domain and Tric1 support a cyclic hexamer generating a pore of sufficient dimensions to transfer tRNA across the mitochondrial membrane. Our results highlight the importance of oligomerization of Tric1 for protein function.