Design of inhibitor peptide sequences based on the interfacial knowledge of the protein G-IgG crystallographic complex and their binding studies with IgG

Protein-protein interactions (PPI) have emerged as valuable targets in medicinal chemistry due to their key roles in important biological processes. The modulation of PPI by small peptides offers an excellent opportunity to develop drugs against human diseases. Here, we exploited the knowledge of the binding interface of the IgG-protein G complex (PDB:1FCC) for designing peptides that can inhibit these complexes. Herein, we have designed several closely related peptides, and the comparison of results from experiments and computational studies indicated that all the peptides bind close to the expected binding site on IgG and the complexes are stable. A minimal sequence consisting of 11 amino acids (P5) with binding constants in the range of 100 nM was identified. We propose that the main affinity differences across the series of peptides arose from the presence of polar amino acid residues. Further, the molecular dynamic studies helped to understand the dynamic properties of complexes in terms of flexibility of residues and structural stability at the interface. The ability of P5 to compete with the protein G in recognizing IgG can help in the detection and purification of antibodies. Further, it can serve as a versatile tool for a better understanding of protein-protein interactions.

Uncovering the interactions between PME and PMEI at the gene and protein levels: Implications for the design of specific PMEI

CONTEXT

Pectin methylesterase inhibitor (PMEI) can specifically bind and inhibit the activity of pectin methylesterase (PME), which has been widely used in fruit and vegetable juice processing. However, the limited three-dimensional structure, unclear action mechanism, low thermal stability and biological activity of PMEI severely limited its application. In this work, molecular recognition and conformational changes of PME and PMEI were analyzed by various molecular simulation methods. Then suggestions were proposed for improving thermal stability and affinity maturation of PMEI through semi-rational design.

METHODS

Phylogenetic trees of PME and PMEI were established using the Maximum likelihood (ML) method. The results show that PME and PMEI have good sequence and structure conservation in various plants, and the simulated data can be widely adopted. In this work, MD simulations were performed using AMBER20 package and ff14SB force field. Protein interaction analysis indicates that H-bonds, van der Waals forces, and the salt bridge formed of K224 with ID116 are the main driving forces for mutual molecular recognition of PME and PMEI. According to the analyses of free energy landscape (FEL), conformational cluster, and motion, the association with PMEI greatly disrupts PME's dispersed functional motion mode and biological function. By monitoring the changes of residue contact number and binding free energy, IG35M/ IG35R: IT93F and IT113W/ IT113W: ID116W mutations contribute to thermal stability and affinity maturation of the PME-PMEI complex system, respectively. This work reveals the interaction between PME and PMEI at the gene and protein levels and provides options for modifying specific PMEI.

New insights into the effect of mutations on affibody-Fc interaction, a molecular dynamics simulation approach

Staphylococcal protein A (SpA) domain B (the basis of affibody) has been widely used in affinity chromatography and found therapeutic applications against inflammatory diseases through targeting the Fc part of immunoglobulin G (IgG). We have performed extensive molecular dynamics simulation of 41 SpA mutants and compared their dynamics and conformations to wild type. The simulations revealed the molecular details of structural and dynamics changes that occurred due to introducing point mutations and helped to explain the SPR results. It was observed in some variants a point mutation caused extensive structural changes far from the mutation site, while an effect of some other mutations was limited to the site of the mutated residue. Also, the pattern of hydrogen bond networks and hydrophobic core arrangements were investigated. We figured out mutations that occurred at positions 128, 136, 150 and 153, affected two hydrophobic cores at the interface as well as mutations introduced at positions 129 and 154 interrupted two hydrogen bond networks of the interface, SPR data showed all of these mutations reduced binding affinity significantly. Overall, by scanning the SpA-Fc interface through the large numbers of introduced mutations, the new insights have been gained which would help to design high- affinity ligands of IgG.

Amino acid substitutions in human growth hormone affect secondary structure and receptor binding

The interaction between human Growth Hormone (hGH) and hGH Receptor (hGHR) has basic relevance to cancer and growth disorders, and hGH is the scaffold for Pegvisomant, an anti-acromegaly therapeutic. For the latter reason, hGH has been extensively engineered by early workers to improve binding and other properties. We are particularly interested in E174 which belongs to the hGH zinc-binding triad; the substitution E174A is known to significantly increase binding, but to now no explanation has been offered. We generated this and several computationally-selected single-residue substitutions at the hGHR-binding site of hGH. We find that, while many successfully slow down dissociation of the hGH-hGHR complex once bound, they also slow down the association of hGH to hGHR. The E174A substitution induces a change in the Circular Dichroism spectrum that suggests the appearance of coiled-coiling. Here we show that E174A increases affinity of hGH against hGHR because the off-rate is slowed down more than the on-rate. For E174Y (and certain mutations at other sites) the slowdown in on-rate was greater than that of the off-rate, leading to decreased affinity. The results point to a link between structure, zinc binding, and hGHR-binding affinity in hGH.

Split & mix assembly of DNA libraries for ultrahigh throughput on-bead screening of functional proteins

Site-saturation libraries reduce protein screening effort in directed evolution campaigns by focusing on a limited number of rationally chosen residues. However, uneven library synthesis efficiency leads to amino acid bias, remedied at high cost by expensive custom synthesis of oligonucleotides, or through use of proprietary library synthesis platforms. To address these shortcomings, we have devised a method where DNA libraries are constructed on the surface of microbeads by ligating dsDNA fragments onto growing, surface-immobilised DNA, in iterative split-and-mix cycles. This method-termed SpliMLiB for Split-and-Mix Library on Beads-was applied towards the directed evolution of an anti-IgE Affibody (ZIgE), generating a 160,000-membered, 4-site, saturation library on the surface of 8 million monoclonal beads. Deep sequencing confirmed excellent library balance (5.1% ± 0.77 per amino acid) and coverage (99.3%). As SpliMLiB beads are monoclonal, they were amenable to direct functional screening in water-in-oil emulsion droplets with cell-free expression. A FACS-based sorting of the library beads allowed recovery of hits improved in Kd over wild-type ZIgE by up to 3.5-fold, while a consensus mutant of the best hits provided a 10-fold improvement. With SpliMLiB, directed evolution workflows are accelerated by integrating high-quality DNA library generation with an ultra-high throughput protein screening platform.