Critical lysine residues of Klf4 required for protein stabilization and degradation

Highlights: • Klf4 undergoes the 26S proteasomal degradation by ubiquitination on its multiple lysine residues. • Essential Klf4 ubiquitination sites are accumulated between 190–263 amino acids. • A mutation of lysine at 232 on Klf4 elongates protein turnover. • Klf4 mutants dramatically suppress p53 expression both under normal and UV irradiated conditions. - Abstract: The transcription factor, Krüppel-like factor 4 (Klf4) plays a crucial role in generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). As the ubiquitination and degradation of the Klf4 protein have been suggested to play an important role in its function, the identification of specific lysine sites that are responsible for protein degradation is of prime interest to improve protein stability and function. However, the molecular mechanism regulating proteasomal degradation of the Klf4 is poorly understood. In this study, both the analysis of Klf4 ubiquitination sites using several Klf4 deletion fragments and bioinformatics predictions showed that the lysine sites which are signaling for Klf4 protein degradation lie in its N-terminal domain (aa 1–296). The results also showed that Lys32, 52, 232, and 252 of Klf4 are responsible for the proteolysis of the Klf4 protein. These results suggest that Klf4 undergoes proteasomal degradation and that these lysine residues are critical for Klf4 ubiquitination