Smoothing a rugged protein folding landscape by sequence-based redesign

The rugged folding landscapes of functional proteins puts them at risk of misfolding and aggregation. Serine protease inhibitors, or serpins, are paradigms for this delicate balance between function and misfolding. Serpins exist in a metastable state that undergoes a major conformational change in order to inhibit proteases. However, conformational labiality of the native serpin fold renders them susceptible to misfolding, which underlies misfolding diseases such as $\alpha_1$-antitrypsin deficiency. To investigate how serpins balance function and folding, we used consensus design to create $\textit{conserpin}$, a synthetic serpin that folds reversibly, is functional, thermostable, and polymerization resistant. Characterization of its structure, folding and dynamics suggest that consensus design has remodeled the folding landscape to reconcile competing requirements for stability and function. This approach may offer general benefits for engineering functional proteins that have risky folding landscapes, including the removal of aggregation-prone intermediates, and modifying scaffolds for use as protein therapeutics.BTP is a Medical Research Council Career Development Fellow. AAN and JJH are supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant number WT 095195). SM acknowledges fellowship support from the Australian Research Council (FT100100960). NAB is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (110100223). GIW is an Australian Research Council Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award Fellow (DP140100087). AMB is a National Health and Medical Research Senior Research Fellow (1022688). JCW is an NHMRC Senior Principal Research fellow and also acknowledges the support of an ARC Federation Fellowship. We thank the Australian Synchrotron for beam-time and technical assistance. This work was supported by the Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualisation Environment (MASSIVE) (www.massive.org.au). We acknowledge the Monash Protein Production Unit and Monash Macromolecular Crystallization Facilit

Smoothing a rugged protein folding landscape by sequence-based redesign

The rugged folding landscapes of functional proteins puts them at risk of misfolding and aggregation. Serine protease inhibitors, or serpins, are paradigms for this delicate balance between function and misfolding. Serpins exist in a metastable state that undergoes a major conformational change in order to inhibit proteases. However, conformational labiality of the native serpin fold renders them susceptible to misfolding, which underlies misfolding diseases such as α1-antitrypsin deficiency. To investigate how serpins balance function and folding, we used consensus design to create conserpin, a synthetic serpin that folds reversibly, is functional, thermostable, and polymerization resistant. Characterization of its structure, folding and dynamics suggest that consensus design has remodeled the folding landscape to reconcile competing requirements for stability and function. This approach may offer general benefits for engineering functional proteins that have risky folding landscapes, including the removal of aggregation-prone intermediates, and modifying scaffolds for use as protein therapeutics

Structure of the metastatic factor P-Rex1 reveals a two-layered autoinhibitory mechanism.

P-Rex (PI(3,4,5)P3-dependent Rac exchanger) guanine nucleotide exchange factors potently activate Rho GTPases. P-Rex guanine nucleotide exchange factors are autoinhibited, synergistically activated by Gβγ and PI(3,4,5)P3 binding and dysregulated in cancer. Here, we use X-ray crystallography, cryogenic electron microscopy and crosslinking mass spectrometry to determine the structural basis of human P-Rex1 autoinhibition. P-Rex1 has a bipartite structure of N- and C-terminal modules connected by a C-terminal four-helix bundle that binds the N-terminal Pleckstrin homology (PH) domain. In the N-terminal module, the Dbl homology (DH) domain catalytic surface is occluded by the compact arrangement of the DH-PH-DEP1 domains. Structural analysis reveals a remarkable conformational transition to release autoinhibition, requiring a 126° opening of the DH domain hinge helix. The off-axis position of Gβγ and PI(3,4,5)P3 binding sites further suggests a counter-rotation of the P-Rex1 halves by 90° facilitates PH domain uncoupling from the four-helix bundle, releasing the autoinhibited DH domain to drive Rho GTPase signaling

Mpeg1 is not essential for antibacterial or antiviral immunity, but is implicated in antigen presentation.

To control infections phagocytes can directly kill invading microbes. Macrophage-expressed gene 1 (Mpeg1), a pore-forming protein sometimes known as perforin-2, is reported to be essential for bacterial killing following phagocytosis. Mice homozygous for the mutant allele Mpeg1tm1Pod succumb to bacterial infection and exhibit deficiencies in bacterial killing in vitro. Here we describe a new Mpeg mutant allele Mpeg1tm1.1Pib on the C57BL/6J background. Mice homozygous for the new allele are not abnormally susceptible to bacterial or viral infection, and irrespective of genetic background show no perturbation in bacterial killing in vitro. Potential reasons for these conflicting findings are discussed. In further work, we show that cytokine responses to inflammatory mediators, as well as antibody generation, are also normal in Mpeg1tm1.1Pib/tm1.1Pib mice. We also show that Mpeg1 is localized to a CD68-positive endolysosomal compartment, and that it exists predominantly as a processed, two-chain disulfide-linked molecule. It is abundant in conventional dendritic cells 1, and mice lacking Mpeg1 do not present the model antigen ovalbumin efficiently. We conclude that Mpeg1 is not essential for innate antibacterial protection or antiviral immunity, but may play a focused role early in the adaptive immune response

Identification of a rare p.G320R alpha-1-antitrypsin variant in emphysema and lung cancer patients

The alpha-1-antitrypsin (A1AT) gene is highly polymorphic, with more than 100 genetic variants identified of which some can affect A1AT protein concentration and/or function and lead to pulmonary and/or liver disease. This study reports on the characterization of a p.G320R variant found in two patients, one with emphysema and the other with lung cancer. This variant results from a single base-pair substitution in exon 4 of the A1AT gene, and has been characterized as P by isoelectric focusing. Functional evaluation of the A1AT p.G320R variant was through comparing specific trypsin inhibitory activity in two patients with pulmonary disorders, carriers of the p.G320R variant, and 19 healthy individuals, carriers of normal A1AT M variants. Results showed that specific trypsin inhibitory activity was lower in both emphysema (2.45 mU/g) and lung cancer (2.07 mU/g) patients than in carriers of the normal variants (range 2.51-3.71 mU/g). This rare A1AT variant is associated with reduced functional activity of A1AT protein. Considering that it was found in patients with severe pulmonary disorders, this variant could be of clinical significance

The YARHG Domain: An Extracellular Domain in Search of a Function

We have identified a new bacterial protein domain that we hypothesise binds to peptidoglycan. This domain is called the YARHG domain after the most highly conserved sequence-segment. The domain is found in the extracellular space and is likely to be composed of four alpha-helices. The domain is found associated with protein kinase domains, suggesting it is associated with signalling in some bacteria. The domain is also found associated with three different families of peptidases. The large number of different domains that are found associated with YARHG suggests that it is a useful functional module that nature has recombined multiple times

Correlated Evolution of Nearby Residues in Drosophilid Proteins

Here we investigate the correlations between coding sequence substitutions as a function of their separation along the protein sequence. We consider both substitutions between the reference genomes of several Drosophilids as well as polymorphisms in a population sample of Zimbabwean Drosophila melanogaster. We find that amino acid substitutions are “clustered” along the protein sequence, that is, the frequency of additional substitutions is strongly enhanced within ≈10 residues of a first such substitution. No such clustering is observed for synonymous substitutions, supporting a “correlation length” associated with selection on proteins as the causative mechanism. Clustering is stronger between substitutions that arose in the same lineage than it is between substitutions that arose in different lineages. We consider several possible origins of clustering, concluding that epistasis (interactions between amino acids within a protein that affect function) and positional heterogeneity in the strength of purifying selection are primarily responsible. The role of epistasis is directly supported by the tendency of nearby substitutions that arose on the same lineage to preserve the total charge of the residues within the correlation length and by the preferential cosegregation of neighboring derived alleles in our population sample. We interpret the observed length scale of clustering as a statistical reflection of the functional locality (or modularity) of proteins: amino acids that are near each other on the protein backbone are more likely to contribute to, and collaborate toward, a common subfunction

Quantitative sequence-function relationships in proteins based on gene ontology

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The relationship between divergence of amino-acid sequence and divergence of function among homologous proteins is complex. The assumption that homologs share function – the basis of transfer of annotations in databases – must therefore be regarded with caution. Here, we present a quantitative study of sequence and function divergence, based on the Gene Ontology classification of function. We determined the relationship between sequence divergence and function divergence in 6828 protein families from the PFAM database. Within families there is a broad range of sequence similarity from very closely related proteins – for instance, orthologs in different mammals – to very distantly-related proteins at the limit of reliable recognition of homology.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We correlated the divergence in sequences determined from pairwise alignments, and the divergence in function determined by path lengths in the Gene Ontology graph, taking into account the fact that many proteins have multiple functions. Our results show that, among homologous proteins, the proportion of divergent functions decreases dramatically above a threshold of sequence similarity at about 50% residue identity. For proteins with more than 50% residue identity, transfer of annotation between homologs will lead to an erroneous attribution with a totally dissimilar function in fewer than 6% of cases. This means that for very similar proteins (about 50 % identical residues) the chance of completely incorrect annotation is low; however, because of the phenomenon of recruitment, it is still non-zero.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results describe general features of the evolution of protein function, and serve as a guide to the reliability of annotation transfer, based on the closeness of the relationship between a new protein and its nearest annotated relative.</p

Multiple structure alignment with msTALI

BACKGROUND: Multiple structure alignments have received increasing attention in recent years as an alternative to multiple sequence alignments. Although multiple structure alignment algorithms can potentially be applied to a number of problems, they have primarily been used for protein core identification. A method that is capable of solving a variety of problems using structure comparison is still absent. Here we introduce a program msTALI for aligning multiple protein structures. Our algorithm uses several informative features to guide its alignments: torsion angles, backbone C(α) atom positions, secondary structure, residue type, surface accessibility, and properties of nearby atoms. The algorithm allows the user to weight the types of information used to generate the alignment, which expands its utility to a wide variety of problems. RESULTS: msTALI exhibits competitive results on 824 families from the Homstrad and SABmark databases when compared to Matt and Mustang. We also demonstrate success at building a database of protein cores using 341 randomly selected CATH domains and highlight the contribution of msTALI compared to the CATH classifications. Finally, we present an example applying msTALI to the problem of detecting hinges in a protein undergoing rigid-body motion. CONCLUSIONS: msTALI is an effective algorithm for multiple structure alignment. In addition to its performance on standard comparison databases, it utilizes clear, informative features, allowing further customization for domain-specific applications. The C++ source code for msTALI is available for Linux on the web at http://ifestos.cse.sc.edu/mstali