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Escobedo A, Piccirillo J, Aranda J, Diercks T, Mateos B, Garcia-Cabau C, Sánchez-Navarro M, Topal B, Biesaga M, Staby L, Kragelund BB, García J, Millet O, Orozco M, Coles M, Crehuet R, Salvatella X. A glutamine-based single α-helix scaffold to target globular proteins. Nat Commun 2022; 13:7073. [PMID: 36400768 PMCID: PMC9674830 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34793-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2022] [Accepted: 11/04/2022] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
The binding of intrinsically disordered proteins to globular ones can require the folding of motifs into α-helices. These interactions offer opportunities for therapeutic intervention but their modulation with small molecules is challenging because they bury large surfaces. Linear peptides that display the residues that are key for binding can be targeted to globular proteins when they form stable helices, which in most cases requires their chemical modification. Here we present rules to design peptides that fold into single α-helices by instead concatenating glutamine side chain to main chain hydrogen bonds recently discovered in polyglutamine helices. The resulting peptides are uncharged, contain only natural amino acids, and their sequences can be optimized to interact with specific targets. Our results provide design rules to obtain single α-helices for a wide range of applications in protein engineering and drug design.
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Affiliation(s)
- Albert Escobedo
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain ,grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Present Address: Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Jonathan Piccirillo
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain ,grid.428469.50000 0004 1794 1018Present Address: Department of Macromolecular Structures, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB-CSIC), Madrid, Spain
| | - Juan Aranda
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Tammo Diercks
- grid.420161.0CIC bioGUNE, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Bizkaia Science and Technology Park, 48160 Derio, Spain
| | - Borja Mateos
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Carla Garcia-Cabau
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Macarena Sánchez-Navarro
- Department of Molecular Biology, Instituto de Parasitología y Biomedicina López Neyra (IPBLN-CSIC), Armilla, Granada Spain
| | - Busra Topal
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Mateusz Biesaga
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Lasse Staby
- grid.5254.60000 0001 0674 042XREPIN and Structural Biology and NMR Laboratory, The Linderstrøm-Lang Centre for Protein Science, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Ole Maaloes Vej 5, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
| | - Birthe B. Kragelund
- grid.5254.60000 0001 0674 042XREPIN and Structural Biology and NMR Laboratory, The Linderstrøm-Lang Centre for Protein Science, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Ole Maaloes Vej 5, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
| | - Jesús García
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Oscar Millet
- grid.420161.0CIC bioGUNE, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Bizkaia Science and Technology Park, 48160 Derio, Spain
| | - Modesto Orozco
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain ,grid.5841.80000 0004 1937 0247Department of Biochemistry and Biomedicine, University of Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Murray Coles
- grid.419580.10000 0001 0942 1125Department of Protein Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Biology, Max-Planck-Ring 5, 72076 Tubingen, Germany
| | - Ramon Crehuet
- grid.4711.30000 0001 2183 4846Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC), CSIC, Jordi Girona 18-26, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Xavier Salvatella
- grid.473715.30000 0004 6475 7299Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Baldiri Reixac 10, 08028 Barcelona, Spain ,grid.425902.80000 0000 9601 989XICREA, Passeig Lluís Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain
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Morató A, Elena-Real CA, Popovic M, Fournet A, Zhang K, Allemand F, Sibille N, Urbanek A, Bernadó P. Robust Cell-Free Expression of Sub-Pathological and Pathological Huntingtin Exon-1 for NMR Studies. General Approaches for the Isotopic Labeling of Low-Complexity Proteins. Biomolecules 2020; 10:E1458. [PMID: 33086646 PMCID: PMC7603387 DOI: 10.3390/biom10101458] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/16/2020] [Revised: 10/07/2020] [Accepted: 10/16/2020] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The high-resolution structural study of huntingtin exon-1 (HttEx1) has long been hampered by its intrinsic properties. In addition to being prone to aggregate, HttEx1 contains low-complexity regions (LCRs) and is intrinsically disordered, ruling out several standard structural biology approaches. Here, we use a cell-free (CF) protein expression system to robustly and rapidly synthesize (sub-) pathological HttEx1. The open nature of the CF reaction allows the application of different isotopic labeling schemes, making HttEx1 amenable for nuclear magnetic resonance studies. While uniform and selective labeling facilitate the sequential assignment of HttEx1, combining CF expression with nonsense suppression allows the site-specific incorporation of a single labeled residue, making possible the detailed investigation of the LCRs. To optimize CF suppression yields, we analyze the expression and suppression kinetics, revealing that high concentrations of loaded suppressor tRNA have a negative impact on the final reaction yield. The optimized CF protein expression and suppression system is very versatile and well suited to produce challenging proteins with LCRs in order to enable the characterization of their structure and dynamics.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Annika Urbanek
- Centre de Biochimie Structurale (CBS), INSERM, CNRS and Université de Montpellier. 29 rue de Navacelles, 34090 Montpellier, France; (A.M.); (C.A.E.-R.); (M.P.); (A.F.); (K.Z.); (F.A.); (N.S.)
| | - Pau Bernadó
- Centre de Biochimie Structurale (CBS), INSERM, CNRS and Université de Montpellier. 29 rue de Navacelles, 34090 Montpellier, France; (A.M.); (C.A.E.-R.); (M.P.); (A.F.); (K.Z.); (F.A.); (N.S.)
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