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Kato K, Nakayoshi T, Sato M, Kurimoto E, Oda A. Molecular Dynamics Simulations for Three-Dimensional Structures of Orotate Phosphoribosyltransferases Constructed from a Simplified Amino Acid Set. ACS OMEGA 2020; 5:13069-13076. [PMID: 32548492 PMCID: PMC7288596 DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.0c01012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/06/2020] [Accepted: 05/19/2020] [Indexed: 05/08/2023]
Abstract
Proteins of modern terrestrial organisms are composed of nearly 20 amino acids; however, the amino acid sets of primitive organisms may have contained fewer than 20 amino acids. Furthermore, the full set of 20 amino acids is not required by some proteins to encode their function. Indeed, simplified variants of Escherichia coli (E. coli) orotate phosphoribosyltransferase (OPRTase) constructed by Akanuma et al. and composed of a limited amino acid set exhibit significant catalytic activity for the growth of E. coli. However, its structural details are currently unclear. Here, we predict the structures of simplified variants of OPRTase using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and evaluate the accuracy of the MD simulations for simplified proteins. The three-dimensional structure of the wild-type was largely maintained in the simplified variants, but differences in the catalyst loop and C-terminal helix were observed. These results are considered sufficient to elucidate the differences in catalytic activity between the wild-type and simplified OPRTase variants. Thus, using MD simulations to make structural predictions appears to be a useful strategy when investigating non-wild-type proteins composed of reduced amino acid sets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Koichi Kato
- Faculty
of Pharmacy, Meijo University, 150 Yagotoyama,
Tempaku-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 468-8503, Japan
- Department
of Pharmacy, Kinjo Gakuin University, 2-1723 Omori, Moriyama-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 463-8521, Japan
| | - Tomoki Nakayoshi
- Faculty
of Pharmacy, Meijo University, 150 Yagotoyama,
Tempaku-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 468-8503, Japan
| | - Mizuha Sato
- Faculty
of Pharmacy, Meijo University, 150 Yagotoyama,
Tempaku-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 468-8503, Japan
| | - Eiji Kurimoto
- Faculty
of Pharmacy, Meijo University, 150 Yagotoyama,
Tempaku-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 468-8503, Japan
| | - Akifumi Oda
- Faculty
of Pharmacy, Meijo University, 150 Yagotoyama,
Tempaku-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 468-8503, Japan
- Institute
for Protein Research, Osaka University, 3-2 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
- .
Phone: +81-52-832-1151
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2
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Solis AD. Reduced alphabet of prebiotic amino acids optimally encodes the conformational space of diverse extant protein folds. BMC Evol Biol 2019; 19:158. [PMID: 31362700 PMCID: PMC6668081 DOI: 10.1186/s12862-019-1464-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/12/2018] [Accepted: 06/19/2019] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Background There is wide agreement that only a subset of the twenty standard amino acids existed prebiotically in sufficient concentrations to form functional polypeptides. We ask how this subset, postulated as {A,D,E,G,I,L,P,S,T,V}, could have formed structures stable enough to found metabolic pathways. Inspired by alphabet reduction experiments, we undertook a computational analysis to measure the structural coding behavior of sequences simplified by reduced alphabets. We sought to discern characteristics of the prebiotic set that would endow it with unique properties relevant to structure, stability, and folding. Results Drawing on a large dataset of single-domain proteins, we employed an information-theoretic measure to assess how well the prebiotic amino acid set preserves fold information against all other possible ten-amino acid sets. An extensive virtual mutagenesis procedure revealed that the prebiotic set excellently preserves sequence-dependent information regarding both backbone conformation and tertiary contact matrix of proteins. We observed that information retention is fold-class dependent: the prebiotic set sufficiently encodes the structure space of α/β and α + β folds, and to a lesser extent, of all-α and all-β folds. The prebiotic set appeared insufficient to encode the small proteins. Assessing how well the prebiotic set discriminates native vs. incorrect sequence-structure matches, we found that α/β and α + β folds exhibit more pronounced energy gaps with the prebiotic set than with nearly all alternatives. Conclusions The prebiotic set optimally encodes local backbone structures that appear in the folded environment and near-optimally encodes the tertiary contact matrix of extant proteins. The fold-class-specific patterns observed from our structural analysis confirm the postulated timeline of fold appearance in proteogenesis derived from proteomic sequence analyses. Polypeptides arising in a prebiotic environment will likely form α/β and α + β-like folds if any at all. We infer that the progressive expansion of the alphabet allowed the increased conformational stability and functional specificity of later folds, including all-α, all-β, and small proteins. Our results suggest that prebiotic sequences are amenable to mutations that significantly lower native conformational energies and increase discrimination amidst incorrect folds. This property may have assisted the genesis of functional proto-enzymes prior to the expansion of the full amino acid alphabet.
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Affiliation(s)
- Armando D Solis
- Biological Sciences Department, New York City College of Technology (City Tech), The City University of New York (CUNY), 285 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, USA.
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Kobayashi N, Inano K, Sasahara K, Sato T, Miyazawa K, Fukuma T, Hecht MH, Song C, Murata K, Arai R. Self-Assembling Supramolecular Nanostructures Constructed from de Novo Extender Protein Nanobuilding Blocks. ACS Synth Biol 2018; 7:1381-1394. [PMID: 29690759 DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.8b00007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
The design of novel proteins that self-assemble into supramolecular complexes is important for development in nanobiotechnology and synthetic biology. Recently, we designed and created a protein nanobuilding block (PN-Block), WA20-foldon, by fusing an intermolecularly folded dimeric de novo WA20 protein and a trimeric foldon domain of T4 phage fibritin (Kobayashi et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 11285). WA20-foldon formed several types of self-assembling nanoarchitectures in multiples of 6-mers, including a barrel-like hexamer and a tetrahedron-like dodecamer. In this study, to construct chain-like polymeric nanostructures, we designed de novo extender protein nanobuilding blocks (ePN-Blocks) by tandemly fusing two de novo binary-patterned WA20 proteins with various linkers. The ePN-Blocks with long helical linkers or flexible linkers were expressed in soluble fractions of Escherichia coli, and the purified ePN-Blocks were analyzed by native PAGE, size exclusion chromatography-multiangle light scattering (SEC-MALS), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and transmission electron microscopy. These results suggest formation of various structural homo-oligomers. Subsequently, we reconstructed hetero-oligomeric complexes from extender and stopper PN-Blocks by denaturation and refolding. The present SEC-MALS and SAXS analyses show that extender and stopper PN-Block (esPN-Block) heterocomplexes formed different types of extended chain-like conformations depending on their linker types. Moreover, atomic force microscopy imaging in liquid suggests that the esPN-Block heterocomplexes with metal ions further self-assembled into supramolecular nanostructures on mica surfaces. Taken together, the present data demonstrate that the design and construction of self-assembling PN-Blocks using de novo proteins is a useful strategy for building polymeric nanoarchitectures of supramolecular protein complexes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naoya Kobayashi
- Exploratory Research Center on Life and Living Systems, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi 444-8787, Japan
| | | | | | - Takaaki Sato
- Center for Energy and Environmental Science, Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research, Shinshu University, Nagano, Nagano 380-8553, Japan
| | - Keisuke Miyazawa
- Division of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920-1192, Japan
| | - Takeshi Fukuma
- Division of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920-1192, Japan
| | - Michael H Hecht
- Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States
| | - Chihong Song
- National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi 444-8585, Japan
| | - Kazuyoshi Murata
- National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Aichi 444-8585, Japan
| | - Ryoichi Arai
- Division of Structural and Synthetic Biology, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Tsurumi, Yokohama 230-0045, Japan
- Institute for Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research, Shinshu University, Matsumoto, Nagano 390-8621, Japan
- Department of Supramolecular Complexes, Research Center for Fungal and Microbial Dynamism, Shinshu University, Minamiminowa, Nagano 399-4598, Japan
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Arai R. Hierarchical design of artificial proteins and complexes toward synthetic structural biology. Biophys Rev 2017; 10:391-410. [PMID: 29243094 DOI: 10.1007/s12551-017-0376-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2017] [Accepted: 11/23/2017] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
In multiscale structural biology, synthetic approaches are important to demonstrate biophysical principles and mechanisms underlying the structure, function, and action of bio-nanomachines. A central goal of "synthetic structural biology" is the design and construction of artificial proteins and protein complexes as desired. In this paper, I review recent remarkable progress of an array of approaches for hierarchical design of artificial proteins and complexes that signpost the path forward toward synthetic structural biology as an emerging interdisciplinary field. Topics covered include combinatorial and protein-engineering approaches for directed evolution of artificial binding proteins and membrane proteins, binary code strategy for structural and functional de novo proteins, protein nanobuilding block strategy for constructing nano-architectures, protein-metal-organic frameworks for 3D protein complex crystals, and rational and computational approaches for design/creation of artificial proteins and complexes, novel protein folds, ideal/optimized protein structures, novel binding proteins for targeted therapeutics, and self-assembling nanomaterials. Protein designers and engineers look toward a bright future in synthetic structural biology for the next generation of biophysics and biotechnology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ryoichi Arai
- Department of Applied Biology, Faculty of Textile Science and Technology, Shinshu University, Ueda, Nagano 386-8567, Japan. .,Department of Supramolecular Complexes, Research Center for Fungal and Microbial Dynamism, Shinshu University, Minamiminowa, Nagano 399-4598, Japan. .,Institute for Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research, Shinshu University, Matsumoto, Nagano 390-8621, Japan. .,Division of Structural and Synthetic Biology, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Tsurumi, Yokohama, Kanagawa 230-0045, Japan.
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Solis AD. Amino acid alphabet reduction preserves fold information contained in contact interactions in proteins. Proteins 2015; 83:2198-216. [DOI: 10.1002/prot.24936] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/06/2015] [Revised: 09/04/2015] [Accepted: 09/04/2015] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Armando D. Solis
- Biological Sciences Department, New York City College of Technology; the City University of New York (CUNY); Brooklyn New York 11201
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6
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Okura H, Mihara H, Takahashi T. Construction of proteins with molecular recognition capabilities using α3β3 de novo protein scaffolds. Protein Eng Des Sel 2013; 26:705-11. [PMID: 24046439 DOI: 10.1093/protein/gzt046] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
The molecular recognition ability of proteins is essential in biological systems, and therefore a considerable amount of effort has been devoted to constructing desired target-binding proteins using a variety of naturally occurring proteins as scaffolds. However, since generating a binding site in a native protein can often affect its structural properties, highly stable de novo protein scaffolds may be more amenable than the native proteins. We previously reported the generation of de novo proteins comprising three α-helices and three β-strands (α3β3) from a genetic library coding simplified amino acid sets. Two α3β3 de novo proteins, vTAJ13 and vTAJ36, fold into a native-like stable and molten globule-like structures, respectively, even though the proteins have similar amino acid compositions. Here, we attempted to create binding sites for the vTAJ13 and vTAJ36 proteins to prove the utility of de novo designed artificial proteins as a molecular recognition tool. Randomization of six amino acids at two linker sites of vTAJ13 and vTAJ36 followed by biopanning generated binding proteins that recognize the target molecules, fluorescein and green fluorescent protein, with affinities of 10(-7)-10(-8) M. Of note, the selected proteins from the vTAJ13-based library tended to recognize the target molecules with high specificity, probably due to the native-like stable structure of vTAJ13. Our studies provide an example of the potential of de novo protein scaffolds, which are composed of a simplified amino acid set, to recognize a variety of target compounds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hiromichi Okura
- Department of Bioengineering, Graduate School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259-B40 Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan
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7
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Reconstructing a flavodoxin oxidoreductase with early amino acids. Int J Mol Sci 2013; 14:12843-52. [PMID: 23783279 PMCID: PMC3709815 DOI: 10.3390/ijms140612843] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2013] [Revised: 05/24/2013] [Accepted: 06/13/2013] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Primitive proteins are proposed to have utilized organic cofactors more frequently than transition metals in redox reactions. Thus, an experimental validation on whether a protein constituted solely by early amino acids and an organic cofactor can perform electron transfer activity is an urgent challenge. In this paper, by substituting "late amino acids (C, F, M, T, W, and Y)" with "early amino acids (A, L, and V)" in a flavodoxin, we constructed a flavodoxin mutant and evaluated its characteristic properties. The major results showed that: (1) The flavodoxin mutant has structural characteristics similar to wild-type protein; (2) Although the semiquinone and hydroquinone flavodoxin mutants possess lower stability than the corresponding form of wild-type flavodoxin, the redox potential of double electron reduction Em,7 (fld) reached -360 mV, indicating that the flavodoxin mutant constituted solely by early amino acids can exert effective electron transfer activity.
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8
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Artificial proteins from combinatorial approaches. Trends Biotechnol 2012; 30:512-20. [DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2012.06.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2012] [Revised: 06/01/2012] [Accepted: 06/06/2012] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
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9
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Longo LM, Blaber M. Protein design at the interface of the pre-biotic and biotic worlds. Arch Biochem Biophys 2012; 526:16-21. [DOI: 10.1016/j.abb.2012.06.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 54] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2012] [Accepted: 06/23/2012] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
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10
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Tanaka J, Yanagawa H, Doi N. Comparison of the frequency of functional SH3 domains with different limited sets of amino acids using mRNA display. PLoS One 2011; 6:e18034. [PMID: 21445307 PMCID: PMC3061877 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018034] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2010] [Accepted: 02/23/2011] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Although modern proteins consist of 20 different amino acids, it has been proposed that primordial proteins consisted of a small set of amino acids, and additional amino acids have gradually been recruited into the genetic code. This hypothesis has recently been supported by comparative genome sequence analysis, but no direct experimental approach has been reported. Here, we utilized a novel experimental approach to test a hypothesis that native-like globular proteins might be easily simplified by a set of putative primitive amino acids with retention of its structure and function than by a set of putative new amino acids. We performed in vitro selection of a functional SH3 domain as a model from partially randomized libraries with different sets of amino acids using mRNA display. Consequently, a library rich in putative primitive amino acids included a larger number of functional SH3 sequences than a library rich in putative new amino acids. Further, the functional SH3 sequences were enriched from the primitive library slightly earlier than from a randomized library with the full set of amino acids, while the function and structure of the selected SH3 proteins with the primitive alphabet were comparable with those from the 20 amino acid alphabet. Application of this approach to various combinations of codons in protein sequences may be useful not only for clarifying the precise order of the amino acid expansion in the early stages of protein evolution but also for efficiently creating novel functional proteins in the laboratory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Junko Tanaka
- Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan
| | - Hiroshi Yanagawa
- Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan
| | - Nobuhide Doi
- Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan
- * E-mail:
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11
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Jäckel C, Hilvert D. Biocatalysts by evolution. Curr Opin Biotechnol 2010; 21:753-9. [DOI: 10.1016/j.copbio.2010.08.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 111] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/08/2010] [Revised: 08/15/2010] [Accepted: 08/19/2010] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
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12
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Tanaka J, Doi N, Takashima H, Yanagawa H. Comparative characterization of random-sequence proteins consisting of 5, 12, and 20 kinds of amino acids. Protein Sci 2010; 19:786-95. [PMID: 20162614 DOI: 10.1002/pro.358] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Screening of functional proteins from a random-sequence library has been used to evolve novel proteins in the field of evolutionary protein engineering. However, random-sequence proteins consisting of the 20 natural amino acids tend to aggregate, and the occurrence rate of functional proteins in a random-sequence library is low. From the viewpoint of the origin of life, it has been proposed that primordial proteins consisted of a limited set of amino acids that could have been abundantly formed early during chemical evolution. We have previously found that members of a random-sequence protein library constructed with five primitive amino acids show high solubility (Doi et al., Protein Eng Des Sel 2005;18:279-284). Although such a library is expected to be appropriate for finding functional proteins, the functionality may be limited, because they have no positively charged amino acid. Here, we constructed three libraries of 120-amino acid, random-sequence proteins using alphabets of 5, 12, and 20 amino acids by preselection using mRNA display (to eliminate sequences containing stop codons and frameshifts) and characterized and compared the structural properties of random-sequence proteins arbitrarily chosen from these libraries. We found that random-sequence proteins constructed with the 12-member alphabet (including five primitive amino acids and positively charged amino acids) have higher solubility than those constructed with the 20-member alphabet, though other biophysical properties are very similar in the two libraries. Thus, a library of moderate complexity constructed from 12 amino acids may be a more appropriate resource for functional screening than one constructed from 20 amino acids.
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Affiliation(s)
- Junko Tanaka
- Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Keio University, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan
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Roy L, Case MA. Protein Core Packing by Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry. J Am Chem Soc 2010; 132:8894-6. [DOI: 10.1021/ja1029717] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Liton Roy
- Department of Chemistry, The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405
| | - Martin A. Case
- Department of Chemistry, The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405
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