Systematic Prediction of FFAT Motifs Across Eukaryote Proteomes Identifies Nucleolar and Eisosome Proteins With the Predicted Capacity to Form Bridges to the Endoplasmic Reticulum

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER), the most pervasive organelle, exchanges information and material with many other organelles, but the extent of its interorganelle connections and the proteins that form bridges are not well known. The integral ER membrane protein vesicle-associated membrane protein-associated protein (VAP) is found in multiple bridges, interacting with many proteins that contain a short linear motif consisting of “two phenylalanines in an acidic tract” (FFAT). The VAP-FFAT interaction is the most common mechanism by which cytoplasmic proteins, particularly interorganelle bridges, target the ER. Therefore, predicting new FFAT motifs may both find new individual peripheral ER proteins and identify new routes of communication involving the ER. Here, we searched for FFAT motifs across whole proteomes. The excess of eukaryotic proteins with FFAT motifs over background was ≥0.8%, suggesting that this is the minimum number of peripheral ER proteins. In yeast, where VAP was previously known to bind 4 proteins with FFAT motifs, a detailed analysis of a subset of proteins predicted 20 FFAT motifs. Extrapolating these findings to the whole proteome estimated the number of FFAT motifs in yeast at approximately 50 to 55 (0.9% of proteome). Among these previously unstudied FFAT motifs, most have known functions outside the ER, so could be involved in interorganelle communication. Many of these can target well-characterized membrane contact sites; however, some are in nucleoli and eisosomes, organelles previously unknown to have molecular bridges to the ER. We speculate that the nucleolar and eisosomal proteins with predicted motifs may function while bridging to the ER, indicating novel ER–nucleolus and ER–eisosome routes of interorganelle communication.