2. Academic Validation
  3. Identification and structure-guided development of triazole urea-based selective antagonists of Arabidopsis karrikin signaling

Identification and structure-guided development of triazole urea-based selective antagonists of Arabidopsis karrikin signaling

  • Nat Commun. 2025 Jan 2;16(1):104. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-54801-1.
Jianwen Wang # 1,  Ikuo Takahashi # 1,  Ko Kikuzato 1,  Toshihiko Sakai 1,  Zhangliang Zhu 1 2,  Kai Jiang 1 3,  Hidemitsu Nakamura 1,  Takeshi Nakano 2,  Masaru Tanokura 1,  Takuya Miyakawa 4 5,  Tadao Asami 6 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
  • 2 Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
  • 3 School of Life Sciences, Yunnan University, Kunming, China.
  • 4 Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. miyakawa.takuya.7j@kyoto-u.ac.jp.
  • 5 Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. miyakawa.takuya.7j@kyoto-u.ac.jp.
  • 6 Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. asami@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
  • 7 Kihara Biological Institute, Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan. asami@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
  • # Contributed equally.
PMID: 39746912 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-54801-1
Abstract

The smoke-derived butenolides, karrikins (KARs), regulate many aspects of plant growth and development. However, KARs and a plant hormone, strigolactones (SLs), have high resemblance in signal perception and transduction, making it hard to delineate KARs response due to the shortage of chemical-genetic tools. Here, we identify a triazole urea KK181N1 as an inhibitor of the KARs receptor KAI2. KK181N1 selectively depress the KAR-induced phenotypes in Arabidopsis. We further elucidate the antagonistic, KAI2 binding mechanism of KK181N1, showing that KK181N1 binds to the catalytic pockets of KAI2 in a non-covalent binding manner. Our experiments also demonstrate the binding affinity of triazole urea compounds are regulated by the structured water molecule networks. By fine-tuning this network, we successfully develop a more potent derivative of KK181N1. We anticipate that these chemicals will be applicable to the elucidation of KARs biology, especially for discriminating the molecular and physiological aspects of KARs and SL signaling.

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