Detecting local structural similarity in proteins by maximizing number of equivalent residues

The evolution of structural genomics

Structural genomics began as a global effort in the 1990s to determine the tertiary structures of all protein families as a response to large-scale genome sequencing projects. The immediate outcome was an influx of tens of thousands of protein structures, many of which had unknown functions. At the time, the value of structural genomics was controversial. However, the structures themselves were only the most obvious output. In addition, these newly solved structures motivated the emergence of huge data science and infrastructure efforts, which, together with advances in Deep Learning, have brought about a revolution in computational molecular biology. Here, we review some of the computational research carried out at the Protein Data Bank Japan (PDBj) during the Protein 3000 project under the leadership of Haruki Nakamura, much of which continues to flourish today.

The role of calcium binding to the EF-hand-like motif in bacterial solute-binding protein for alginate import

Gram-negative Sphingomonas sp. A1 incorporates acidic polysaccharide alginate into the cytoplasm via a cell-surface alginate-binding protein (AlgQ2)-dependent ATP-binding cassette transporter (AlgM1M2SS). We investigated the function of calcium bound to the EF-hand-like motif in AlgQ2 by introducing mutations at the calcium-binding site. The X-ray crystallography of the AlgQ2 mutant (D179A/E180A) demonstrated the absence of calcium binding and significant disorder of the EF-hand-like motif. Distinct from the wild-type AlgQ2, the mutant was quite unstable at temperature of strain A1 growth, although unsaturated alginate oligosaccharides stabilized the mutant by formation of substrate/protein complex. In the assay of ATPase and alginate transport by AlgM1M2SS reconstructed in the liposome, the wild-type and mutant AlgQ2 induced AlgM1M2SS ATPase activity in the presence of unsaturated alginate tetrasaccharide. These results indicate that the calcium bound to EF-hand-like motif stabilizes the substrate-unbound AlgQ2 but is not required for the complexation of substrate-bound AlgQ2 and AlgM1M2SS.

Identification of quasi-stable water molecules near the Thr73-Lys13 catalytic diad of Bacillus sp. TB-90 urate oxidase by X-ray crystallography with controlled humidity

Urate oxidases (UOs) catalyze the cofactor-independent oxidation of uric acid, and an extensive water network in the active site has been suggested to play an essential role in the catalysis. For our present analysis of the structure and function of the water network, the crystal qualities of Bacillus sp. TB-90 urate oxidase were improved by controlled dehydration using the humid air and glue-coating method. After the dehydration, the P21212 crystals were transformed into the I222 space group, leading to an extension of the maximum resolution to 1.42 Å. The dehydration of the crystals revealed a significant change in the five-water-molecules' binding mode in the vicinity of the catalytic diad, indicating that these molecules are quasi-stable. The pH profile analysis of log(kcat) gave two pKa values: pKa1 at 6.07 ± 0.07 and pKa2 at 7.98 ± 0.13. The site-directed mutagenesis of K13, T73 and N276 involved in the formation of the active-site water network revealed that the activities of these mutant variants were significantly reduced. These structural and kinetic data suggest that the five quasi-stable water molecules play an essential role in the catalysis of the cofactor-independent urate oxidation by reducing the energy penalty for the substrate-binding or an on-off switching for the proton-relay rectification.

MAFFT-DASH: integrated protein sequence and structural alignment

Here, we describe a web server that integrates structural alignments with the MAFFT multiple sequence alignment (MSA) tool. For this purpose, we have prepared a web-based Database of Aligned Structural Homologs (DASH), which provides structural alignments at the domain and chain levels for all proteins in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), and can be queried interactively or by a simple REST-like API. MAFFT-DASH integration can be invoked with a single flag on either the web (https://mafft.cbrc.jp/alignment/server/) or command-line versions of MAFFT. In our benchmarks using 878 cases from the BAliBase, HomFam, OXFam, Mattbench and SISYPHUS datasets, MAFFT-DASH showed 10-20% improvement over standard MAFFT for MSA problems with weak similarity, in terms of Sum-of-Pairs (SP), a measure of how well a program succeeds at aligning input sequences in comparison to a reference alignment. When MAFFT alignments were supplemented with homologous sequences, further improvement was observed. Potential applications of DASH beyond MSA enrichment include functional annotation through detection of remote homology and assembly of template libraries for homology modeling.

Protein Data Bank Japan (PDBj): updated user interfaces, resource description framework, analysis tools for large structures

The Protein Data Bank Japan (PDBj, http://pdbj.org), a member of the worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB), accepts and processes the deposited data of experimentally determined macromolecular structures. While maintaining the archive in collaboration with other wwPDB partners, PDBj also provides a wide range of services and tools for analyzing structures and functions of proteins. We herein outline the updated web user interfaces together with RESTful web services and the backend relational database that support the former. To enhance the interoperability of the PDB data, we have previously developed PDB/RDF, PDB data in the Resource Description Framework (RDF) format, which is now a wwPDB standard called wwPDB/RDF. We have enhanced the connectivity of the wwPDB/RDF data by incorporating various external data resources. Services for searching, comparing and analyzing the ever-increasing large structures determined by hybrid methods are also described.

MAFFT: iterative refinement and additional methods

This chapter outlines several methods implemented in the MAFFT package. MAFFT is a popular multiple sequence alignment (MSA) program with various options for the progressive method, the iterative refinement method and other methods. We first outline basic usage of MAFFT and then describe recent practical extensions, such as dot plot and adjustment of direction in DNA alignment. We also refer to MUSCLE, another high-performance MSA program.