MutLα and Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen Share Binding Sites on MutSβ*

MutSβ (MSH2-MSH3) mediates repair of insertion-deletion heterologies but also triggers triplet repeat expansions that cause neurological diseases. Like other DNA metabolic activities, MutSβ interacts with proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) via a conserved motif (QXX(L/I)XXFF). We demonstrate that MutSβ-PCNA complex formation occurs with an affinity of ∼0.1 μm and a preferred stoichiometry of 1:1. However, up to 20% of complexes are multivalent under conditions where MutSβ is in molar excess over PCNA. Conformational studies indicate that the two proteins associate in an end-to-end fashion in solution. Surprisingly, mutation of the PCNA-binding motif of MutSβ not only abolishes PCNA binding, but unlike MutSα, also dramatically attenuates MutSβ-MutLα interaction, MutLα endonuclease activation, and bidirectional mismatch repair. As predicted by these findings, PCNA competes with MutLα for binding to MutSβ, an effect that is blocked by the cell cycle regulator p21CIP1. We propose that MutSβ-MutLα interaction is mediated in part by residues ((L/I)SRFF) embedded within the MSH3 PCNA-binding motif. To our knowledge this is the first case where residues important for PCNA binding also mediate interaction with a second protein. These findings also indicate that MutSβ- and MutSα-initiated repair events differ in fundamental ways.