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Hirschi S, Lemmin T, Ayoub N, Kalbermatter D, Pellegata D, Ucurum Z, Gertsch J, Fotiadis D. Structural insights into the mechanism and dynamics of proteorhodopsin biogenesis and retinal scavenging. Nat Commun 2024; 15:6950. [PMID: 39138159 PMCID: PMC11322631 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50960-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2023] [Accepted: 07/25/2024] [Indexed: 08/15/2024] Open
Abstract
Microbial ion-pumping rhodopsins (MRs) are extensively studied retinal-binding membrane proteins. However, their biogenesis, including oligomerisation and retinal incorporation, remains poorly understood. The bacterial green-light absorbing proton pump proteorhodopsin (GPR) has emerged as a model protein for MRs and is used here to address these open questions using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Specifically, conflicting studies regarding GPR stoichiometry reported pentamer and hexamer mixtures without providing possible assembly mechanisms. We report the pentameric and hexameric cryo-EM structures of a GPR mutant, uncovering the role of the unprocessed N-terminal signal peptide in the assembly of hexameric GPR. Furthermore, certain proteorhodopsin-expressing bacteria lack retinal biosynthesis pathways, suggesting that they scavenge the cofactor from their environment. We shed light on this hypothesis by solving the cryo-EM structure of retinal-free proteoopsin, which together with mass spectrometry and MD simulations suggests that decanoate serves as a temporary placeholder for retinal in the chromophore binding pocket. Further MD simulations elucidate possible pathways for the exchange of decanoate and retinal, offering a mechanism for retinal scavenging. Collectively, our findings provide insights into the biogenesis of MRs, including their oligomeric assembly, variations in protomer stoichiometry and retinal incorporation through a potential cofactor scavenging mechanism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephan Hirschi
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland.
- Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, OX1 3QU, Oxford, UK.
| | - Thomas Lemmin
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland.
| | - Nooraldeen Ayoub
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - David Kalbermatter
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Daniele Pellegata
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Zöhre Ucurum
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Jürg Gertsch
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Dimitrios Fotiadis
- Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland.
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Mao J, Jin X, Shi M, Heidenreich D, Brown LJ, Brown RCD, Lelli M, He X, Glaubitz C. Molecular mechanisms and evolutionary robustness of a color switch in proteorhodopsins. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2024; 10:eadj0384. [PMID: 38266078 PMCID: PMC10807816 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj0384] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/02/2023] [Accepted: 12/22/2023] [Indexed: 01/26/2024]
Abstract
Proteorhodopsins are widely distributed photoreceptors from marine bacteria. Their discovery revealed a high degree of evolutionary adaptation to ambient light, resulting in blue- and green-absorbing variants that correlate with a conserved glutamine/leucine at position 105. On the basis of an integrated approach combining sensitivity-enhanced solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy and linear-scaling quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) methods, this single residue is shown to be responsible for a variety of synergistically coupled structural and electrostatic changes along the retinal polyene chain, ionone ring, and within the binding pocket. They collectively explain the observed color shift. Furthermore, analysis of the differences in chemical shift between nuclei within the same residues in green and blue proteorhodopsins also reveals a correlation with the respective degree of conservation. Our data show that the highly conserved color change mainly affects other highly conserved residues, illustrating a high degree of robustness of the color phenotype to sequence variation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jiafei Mao
- Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and Center for Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance (BMRZ), Goethe University Frankfurt, Max von Laue Straße 9, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Xinsheng Jin
- Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Molecular Therapeutics and New Drug Development, Shanghai Frontiers Science Center of Molecule Intelligent Syntheses, School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
| | - Man Shi
- Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Molecular Therapeutics and New Drug Development, Shanghai Frontiers Science Center of Molecule Intelligent Syntheses, School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
| | - David Heidenreich
- Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and Center for Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance (BMRZ), Goethe University Frankfurt, Max von Laue Straße 9, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Lynda J. Brown
- Department of Chemistry, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ UK
| | - Richard C. D. Brown
- Department of Chemistry, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ UK
| | - Moreno Lelli
- Department of Chemistry “Ugo Schiff” and Magnetic Resonance Center (CERM), University of Florence, Via della Lastruccia 3, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019 Italy
- Consorzio Interuniversitario Risonanze Magnetiche MetalloProteine (CIRMMP), Via Luigi Sacconi 6, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019 Italy
| | - Xiao He
- Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Molecular Therapeutics and New Drug Development, Shanghai Frontiers Science Center of Molecule Intelligent Syntheses, School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China
- New York University–East China Normal University Center for Computational Chemistry, New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, 200062, China
| | - Clemens Glaubitz
- Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and Center for Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance (BMRZ), Goethe University Frankfurt, Max von Laue Straße 9, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
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Church JR, Amoyal GS, Borin VA, Adam S, Olsen JMH, Schapiro I. Deciphering the Spectral Tuning Mechanism in Proteorhodopsin: The Dominant Role of Electrostatics Instead of Chromophore Geometry. Chemistry 2022; 28:e202200139. [PMID: 35307890 PMCID: PMC9325082 DOI: 10.1002/chem.202200139] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/15/2022] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Abstract
Proteorhodopsin (PR) is a photoactive proton pump found in marine bacteria. There are two phenotypes of PR exhibiting an environmental adaptation to the ocean's depth which tunes their maximum absorption: blue‐absorbing proteorhodopsin (BPR) and green‐absorbing proteorhodopsin (GPR). This blue/green color‐shift is controlled by a glutamine to leucine substitution at position 105 which accounts for a 20 nm shift. Typically, spectral tuning in rhodopsins is rationalized by the external point charge model but the Q105L mutation is charge neutral. To study this tuning mechanism, we employed the hybrid QM/MM method with sampling from molecular dynamics. Our results reveal that the positive partial charge of glutamine near the C14−C15 bond of retinal shortens the effective conjugation length of the chromophore compared to the leucine residue. The derived mechanism can be applied to explain the color regulation in other retinal proteins and can serve as a guideline for rational design of spectral shifts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan R Church
- Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics Research, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel
| | - Gil S Amoyal
- Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics Research, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel
| | - Veniamin A Borin
- Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics Research, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel
| | - Suliman Adam
- Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics Research, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel
| | | | - Igor Schapiro
- Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics Research, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel
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Sumikawa M, Abe-Yoshizumi R, Uchihashi T, Kandori H. Molecular Origin of the Anomalous pH Effect in Blue Proteorhodopsin. J Phys Chem Lett 2021; 12:12225-12229. [PMID: 34928158 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c03355] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Proteorhodopsin (PR) is a light-driven proton pump found in marine bacteria, and thousands of PRs are classified into blue-absorbing PR (BPR; λmax ∼ 490 nm) and green-absorbing PR (GPR; λmax ∼ 525 nm). We previously presented conversion of BPR into GPR using the anomalous pH effect. When we lowered the pH of a BPR to pH 2 and returned to pH 7, the protein absorbs green light. This suggests the existence of the critical point of the irreversible process at around pH 2, but the mechanism of anomalous pH effect was fully unknown. The present size exclusion chromatography (SEC) and atomic force microscope (AFM) analysis of BPR from Vibrio califitulae (VcBPR) revealed the anomalous pH effect because of the conversion from pentamer to monomer. The different pKa of the Schiff base counterion between pentamer and monomer leads to different colors at the same pH.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mizuki Sumikawa
- Department of Life Science and Applied Chemistry, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan
| | - Rei Abe-Yoshizumi
- Department of Life Science and Applied Chemistry, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan
| | | | - Hideki Kandori
- Department of Life Science and Applied Chemistry, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan
- OptoBioTechnology Research Center, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan
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Adam S, Wiebeler C, Schapiro I. Structural Factors Determining the Absorption Spectrum of Channelrhodopsins: A Case Study of the Chimera C1C2. J Chem Theory Comput 2021; 17:6302-6313. [PMID: 34255519 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.1c00160] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/31/2023]
Abstract
Channelrhodopsins are photosensitive proteins that trigger flagella motion in single-cell algae and have been successfully utilized in optogenetic applications. In optogenetics, light is used to activate neural cells in living organisms, which can be achieved by exploiting the ion channel signaling of channelrhodopsins. Tailoring channelrhodopsins for such applications includes the tuning of the absorption maximum. In order to establish rational design and to obtain a desired spectral shift, a basic understanding of the absorption spectrum is required. We have studied the chimera C1C2 as a representative of this protein family and the first member with an available crystal structure. For this purpose, we sampled the conformations of C1C2 using quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical molecular dynamics and subjected the resulting snapshots of the trajectory to excitation energy calculations using ADC(2) and simplified time-dependent density functional theory. In contrast to previous reports, we found that different hydrogen-bonding networks-involving the retinal protonated Schiff base, the putative counterions E162 and D292, and water molecules-had only a small impact on the absorption spectrum. However, in the case of deprotonated E162, increasing the distance to the Schiff base hydrogen-bonding partner led to a systematic blue shift. The β-ionone ring rotation was identified as another important contributor. Yet the most important factors were found to be the bond length alternation and bond order alternation that were linearly correlated to the absorption maximum by up to 62 and 82%, respectively. We ascribe this novel insight into the structural basis of the absorption spectrum to our enhanced protein setup that includes membrane embedding as well as long and extensive sampling.
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Affiliation(s)
- Suliman Adam
- Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel
| | - Christian Wiebeler
- Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel
| | - Igor Schapiro
- Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics, Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel
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