bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.19.436134; this version posted March 19, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC 4.0 International license. Autophosphorylation of the KaiC-like protein ArlH inhibits oligomerisation and interaction with ArlI, the motor ATPase of the archaellum J. Nuno de Sousa Machado1,2, Leonie Vollmar2,3, Julia Schimpf2,3, Paushali 1 1 1 3 Chaudhury , Rashmi Kumariya , Chris van der Does , Thorsten Hugel and Sonja- Verena Albers1, * 1Molecular Biology of Archaea and Signaling Research Centre BIOSS, Institute of Biology II, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany 2Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany 3Institute of Physical Chemistry and Signaling Research Centers BIOSS and CIBSS, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany *Corresponding author: Sonja-Verena Albers, e-mail:
[email protected] Motile archaea are propelled by the archaellum, whose motor complex consists of the membrane protein ArlJ, the ATPase ArlI, and the ATP-binding protein ArlH. Despite its essential function and the existence of structural and biochemical data on ArlH, the role of ArlH in archaellum assembly and function remains elusive. ArlH is a structural homolog of KaiC, the central component of the cyanobacterial circadian clock. Similar to KaiC, ArlH exhibits autophosphorylation activity, which was observed for both ArlH of the euryarchaeon Pyrococcus furiosus (PfArlH) and the crenarchaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius (SaArlH).