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1 Department of Biochemistry,
2 Department of Biological Structure,
3 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and
4 Biomolecular Structure and Design Program, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Reprint requests to: David Baker, Department of Biochemistry, Box 357350, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195; e-mail: dabaker{at}u.washington.edu; fax: (206) 685-1792.
(RECEIVED May 21, 2002; FINAL REVISION September 3, 2002; ACCEPTED September 3, 2002)
Article and publication are at http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/doi/10.1110/ps.0216902
| Abstract |
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Keywords: Computational protein design; ß-hairpin design; protein folding; protein G; crystal structure of protein G
Abbreviations: GyHCl guanidine hydrochloride
| Introduction |
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An alternative to a complete parameterization of the backbone is to replace the wild-type backbone with, for example, a structural element from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). We used this approach to redesign the first hairpin of protein G (Nauli et al. 2001). The design energy function simulates the physical interactions stabilizing protein structures and is dominated by a Lennard-Jones packing term and an implicit solvation term (Kuhlman and Baker 2000). NuG1 and NuG2 are 4 kcal/mole more stable and fold 100-fold faster when compared to wild-type protein G (Nauli et al. 2001). Furthermore, the folding pathways of the two proteins are opposite that of wild-type protein G. In wild-type protein G, the second ß-hairpin is formed and the first disrupted in the folding transition state, whereas in NuG1 and NuG2, the first hairpin is formed and the second is disrupted.
In this article, we investigate the accuracy of structural prediction made by our design program by comparing the computational models with the crystal structures of NuG1 and NuG2. The root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) of the backbone of the redesigned turn between the crystal structure and the computational model is 1.7 Å for NuG1 and 3.4 Å for NuG2. In contrast, the RMSD between the crystal structure and the structure of wild-type protein G is 5.1 Å for NuG1 and 7.2 Å for NuG2. We also seek to further stabilize both NuG1 and NuG2 by incorporating low energy sequence changes suggested by the design algorithm and the new crystal structure. The resulting variants of both NuG1 and NuG2 are either more stable than their respective wild-type proteins or maintain wild-type stability.
| Results |
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= 169°,
= -161°), which is unfavorable for the ß-strand conformation. In NuG1, Val14 adopts dihedral angles (-115°, 131°), which is regularly observed for ß-strands (Table 3
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| Discussion |
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Given the overall success of the designs, it is interesting that the central core residues, Ile7, can populate multiple conformations and that the B factors are significantly higher for this region of the protein. Increased entropy in the folded state may be one of the reasons that NuG1 is significantly more stable than wild-type protein G. We recently redesigned a hairpin in protein L using methods identical to those used in the protein G redesigns. Unlike NuG1 and NuG2, the protein L variants were not more stable than wild-type protein, but the crystal structure of the redesigned protein matched the design model almost identically and the B factors were not higher in the redesigned hairpin (Kuhlman et al. 2002). The differences between the protein L and protein G results suggest a tradeoff between specificity and stability similar to what has been observed in the design of helical bundles (Bryson et al. 1995).
Alternatively, both the increased stability and B factors may be consequences of the significant increase in the hydrophobicity of the redesigned hairpin (Table 1
), which may allow for greater burial of hydrophobic surface with less constraint on maintaining interactions among solvating polar residues. Designed proteins have frequently been observed to be more molten than their naturally occurring counterparts. The NuG1 structure shows that this can extend to redesigned substructure within a single protein; the B factors are much higher in the first hairpin than the second.
Given their switched folding pathways relative to wild-type protein G, we anticipate that the NuG1 and NuG2 crystal structures will be useful for the testing of computational models that try to predict folding mechanisms. The crystal structures of NuG1, NuG2, and wild-type protein G have been used by two theoretical models of folding to examine the importance of the two ß-hairpins. Both models correctly predict that the first hairpin turn is formed before the second hairpin turn in NuG1 and NuG2, but the exact opposite in wild-type protein G (E. Alm and Y. Zhou, pers. comm.).
Rationally designed mutations that increase stability
As a test of the design algorithm, we used the program to identify mutations that would stabilize NuG1 and NuG2. Guanidine unfolding experiments showed that some of the mutations were stabilizing and that none of them were significantly destabilizing, but there was only a weak correlation between the actual and computed changes in free energy. Some of the discrepancy probably arises because the energy function has been optimized to reproduce native-like sequences, and therefore it tries to maintain the correct balance of hydrophobic and polar amino acids so as to maintain solubility as well as stability. For example, two of the mutations that were computationally favorable, but experimentally neutral, were I9K in NuG1 and V21A in NuG2. Both of these mutations are highly solvent exposed and less hydrophobic residues are favored at these positions by the Lazaridis-Karplus solvation model used in the design algorithm.
In the cases where the mutations were stabilizing different features seem to be optimized in each case. In NuG2 Glu 25 forms a hydrogen bond with the backbone nitrogen from residue 21 that lowers the energy by 1.4 kcal/mole. In NuG1 Ile 39 and Ile 54 bury more hydrophobic surface area and make more favorable van der Waals contacts. The computed Lennard-Jones score is -271.1 kcal/mole for the double mutant as opposed to -268.5 kcal/mole for the wild-type structure.
The results described in this paper highlight our ability to make rational changes in a protein sequence, predict the resulting structure, and also make rational mutations that would increase protein stability. Most mutants of both NuG1 and NuG2 are more stable or maintain wild-type stability. Where the algorithm fails, the problem seems to be in its current inability to allow backbone changes. To deal with this problem we are currently combining our ab initio structural prediction method Rosetta (Bonneau and Baker 2001) with the design algorithm (B.Kuhlman, unpubl.) to allow simultaneous searching in sequence and structure space.
| Materials and methods |
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Crystal structures
Diffraction data for NuG1 were collected at the Stanford Synchotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) at Beamline 91. For NuG2, we use an in-house Cu-K-alpha X-ray source with a Rigaku R-Axis IIC detector and an RU200 rotating anode generator. Data processing was with Denzo and Scalepack. As NuG2 was readily available, it was crystallized first and a dataset was collected for it. A molecular replacement (MR) solution was found using the wild-type protein G coordinates (1PGA; Gallagher et al. 1994) as the search model in the MR program EPMR (Kissinger et al. 1999). The NuG2 model could not be refined to values of R and Rfree that are normally expected for a dataset extending to 1.85 Å resolution. We tried various space groups for the data; however, the best model still refined only to an R factor of 26%. Because of this reason, we report here only a model that fits the diffraction data. Coordinates and structure factors have been deposited in the PDB for both NuG1 and NuG2.
NuG1 crystals were then grown and a dataset was collected for them at the SSRL. An MR solution was found with Amore (Navaza 2001) using a model of NuG2 where the redesigned hairpin was converted to polyalanine. Refinement of both structures uses the following programs: CCP4 suite, XtalView (McRee 1999) and CNS (Brunger et al. 1998).
Although the data set for NuG2 extends to 1.85 Å resolution, the model can only be refined to 26% R factor. We note that the dataset has a relatively large Wilson B factor. Considering how the stability of this protein, a mobile structure is unlikely to be the cause of the high Wilson B factor. A more likely reason is the high degree of static disorder in the crystal due to each protein molecule packing in a slightly different orientation relative to its neighbors.
Guanidine denaturation
Guanidine denaturations were monitored using an Aviv 16A DS CD machine. Proteins were equilibrated at 50°C for 2 min and each data point is an average of 1 min of CD signal at 220 nm. Protein concentrations are 10 µM. The data are an average of two measurements.
Modeling
The design program and energy function used to identify stabilizing mutations have been described in more detail previously (Kuhlman and Baker 2000). The energy function used to rank structures is a linear combination of the following terms: (1) a 126 Lennard-Jones potential truncated at E = 0; (2) a linear repulsive term below E = 0 that ramps up to E = 10 at no separation; (3) the Lazaridis-Karplus implicit solvation model; (4) an empirically based hydrogen bonding potential derived from the PDB database (T. Kortemme and D. Baker, pers. comm.); (5) side chain internal free energies derived from PDB statistics (Dunbrack and Cohen 1997); (6) an approximation to electrostatic interactions in protein based on PDB statistics (Simons et al. 1999); and (7) reference values for each of the 20 amino acids. The desired hydrophobicity of a given residue is largely determined by the combination of the Lennard-Jones term, the Lazaridis-Karplus term, and the reference energies.
For NuG1, the newly solved crystal structure was used as the template for modeling and only positions in the redesigned hairpin were allowed to vary during the simulations: 5, 7, 9, 14, 16, 33, 34, 39, and 54. All other side chains were held fixed in positions observed in the NuG1 crystal structure. The two variants selected for experimental study, V39I/V54I and I9K/V39I/V54I, were the lowest scoring sequences with two and three mutations, respectively. A third sequence containing five mutations was also identified (I7V/I9K/Y33W/A34L/V39Y) but has not been studied experimentally.
In the case of NuG2, mutations were restricted to regions outside of the redesigned hairpin and therefore, the crystal structure of wild-type protein G was used as the template for modeling. To identify a set of proteins that varied from one to five mutations, the energy function was modified so that the Monte Carlo search of sequence space was biased toward a desired number of mutations. Adding the following quadratic energy term to the total energy proved suitable for creating structure with the desired number of mutations: (number of mutations - desired number of mutations)2. In the simulations all residues and rotamers outside of the redesigned hairpin were allowed to vary and in the first run the desired number of mutations was set to 1. This mutation was then fixed and the desired number of mutations was set to 2. This procedure was followed for up to five mutations and the following variants were picked out: V21A, V21A/Y3F, V21A/Y3F/T25E, V21A/Y3F/T25E/T53V, and V21A/Y3F/T25E/T53V/D47A. At this point it was noticed that these mutations are not located near each other in the structure; therefore we decided make each of them independent and combine the stabilizing mutations in one final variant. These sequences are shown in Table 4
with their respective experimental and computed energies.
| Acknowledgments |
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The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USC section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
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