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The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, Department of Biological Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat-Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
Reprint requests to: Isaiah T. Arkin, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, Department of Biological Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat-Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel; e-mail: arkin{at}cc.huji.ac.il; fax: 972-(0)2-6584329.
(RECEIVED April 21, 2003; FINAL REVISION July 17, 2003; ACCEPTED July 22, 2003)
Article and publication are at http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/doi/10.1110/ps.03151103.
| Abstract |
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Keywords: HRSV; membrane protein; molecular dynamics; SH protein; protein structure; viroporin
Abbreviations: RMSD, root mean square deviation CNS, crystallography and NMR system CHI, CNS searching of helix interactions HRSV, human respiratory syncytial virus SH, small hydrophobic
| Introduction |
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The SH protein consists of 64 amino acids (antigenic subgroup A) or 65 amino acids (antigenic subgroup B). One hypothesis with regard to the function of SH is that it forms ion channels (Collins and Mottet 1993), as suggested by permeability changes of Escherichia coli membranes induced by the expression of HRSV SH protein-subgroup B (Perez et al. 1997). Other studies point toward different or additional functions; SH may be required for stabilization of the viral envelope in nature, or SH may represent a viral encoded virulence factor (Bukreyev et al. 1997; Whitehead et al. 1999; Chen et al. 2000). A recent functional analysis of recombinant mutants suggests that SH is not involved in binding or infectivity, and that it inhibits virus fusion and spreading in cell culture, at least in the absence of the G protein (Techaarpornkul et al. 2001). Insight into the three-dimensional structure of the SH protein may enable a better understanding of SHs role in the life cycle of the virus, and potentially facilitate focused screening of candidate drugs.
Prediction of a transmembrane domain structure is facilitated by its tendency to adopt (in most cases) an
-helical fold, limiting the number of possible conformations. Brünger and coworkers (Treutlein et al. 1992; Adams et al. 1995) have developed a procedure to explore transmembrane helix interactions on the basis of global searching molecular dynamics simulations. In this method, multiple symmetric bundles of helices are constructed, each differing from the other by the rotation of the helices about their axes. These are then used as starting positions for molecular dynamics and energy minimization protocols. The output structures from these simulations are compared and grouped into clusters that contain similar structures. An average of the structures forming a cluster represents a model with characteristic interhelical interactions and helix tilt.
Until recently, the correct model was selected among the several different clusters, on the basis of existing experimental data, either from mutagenesis (Lemmon et al. 1992a,b; Arkin et al. 1994) or orientational data from site-specific infrared dichroism used as spatial restraints (Kukol et al. 1999; Torres et al. 2000). Recently, an improvement to this method was suggested, in which simulations are performed on close sequence variants that are likely to share the same structure (Briggs et al. 2001; Kukol et al. 2002; Torres et al. 2002).
Here, we present a model for the structure of the transmembrane domain of SH protein of HRSV, on the basis of global molecular dynamics, using silent amino acid substitution modeling to discriminate between the different candidate structures obtained. Ambiguities with regard to the oligomeric state of the protein, and the span of the transmembrane segment of the protein, were overcome through simulation of oligomers of different sizes and sequences of different lengths. The results of the simulation incorporating eight different variants point to a model in which SH assembles into homopentameric helical bundle.
| Materials and methods |
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-carbon RMSD from any other structure within that cluster. Therefore, some clusters overlap, and output structures may be members of more than one cluster. The structures belonging to each cluster were averaged and subjected to a further simulated annealing protocol. This final structure was taken as the representative of the cluster.
Analysis of the simulations
The results from the global searching molecular dynamics simulations were represented graphically by plotting each cluster representative as a function of two parameters, the helix rotation angle
, and the crossing angle
, as described previously (Briggs et al. 2001).
is the helix rotational angle about the long axis of the helices relative to some arbitrary starting position. The helical axis is a vector with starting and end points above and below a defined residue, in which the points correspond to the geometric mean of the coordinates of the five
carbons amino-terminal and the five
carbons carboxy-terminal to the defined residue.
Precise comparisons between similar clusters obtained from different variants were made by calculating the RMSD between their
carbon backbones. In the simulations, the handedness of the bundle is indicated by the helix tilt sign, positive or negative, which corresponds to left- and right-handed bundles, respectively.
| Results |
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Figure 2
shows the results of a hydrophobicity analysis of SH using the GES scale (Engelman et al. 1986), with a window size of 15 residues and a hydrophobicity threshold of
Gwater
oil = -25 kcal/mole (Stevens and Arkin 2000). Despite the fact that the value obtained for amino acid 23 is higher than that obtained for amino acid 14, we simulated SH using both sequences, that is, 1441 and 2341. Thus, six different combinations were simulated for each of the eight different variants (seven different variants for the short TM segment) as follows: (1) a trimeric short bundle, (2) a trimeric long bundle, (3) a tetrameric short bundle, (4) a tetrameric long bundle, (5) a pentameric short bundle, and (6) a pentameric long bundle. The total number of global molecular dynamics searches performed was therefore 45, analyzing a total of 12,960 structures.
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(Briggs et al. 2001), multiple clusters are obtained. However, only one conformation located at
~122° and
~14°, persists in all sequences. No structure within this complete set differs from any other in the set by more than 0.82 Å C
RMSD. Note that the actual calculation of the rotation pitch angle
is not as accurate a representation of the similarity between two structures as is the C
RMSD. As such, structures with slightly differing rotational pitch angles might still be relatively similar and vice versa.
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~176°,
~11°, with <0.81 Å C
RMSD between the different variants.
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RMSD of 4.58 Å and a shift of the
angles of 90° between the two structures.
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~263°,
~13°). The complete set found here can be defined at <0.99 Å C
RMSD.
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RMSD. The conformation that persists in all variants is at position
~25°,
~15° (Fig. 7
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RMSD of 1.9 Å, and a shift of the
angles of 30°.
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RMSD threshold to 1.85 Å. Similarly, simulations of the long TM segment as a trimer could not find any complete set, unless the C
RMSD threshold was raised to 1.45 Å. Superimposing the complete sets from the long and short TM segments resulted in a C
RMSD of 2.22 Å between the two structures. | Discussion |
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RMSD required in order to form a complete set, 1.85 Å and 1.45 Å when using the long TM segment or the short TM segment, respectively. Furthermore, it is difficult to imagine a trimeric helical bundle functioning as an ion channel, on the basis of structural considerations.
Determining whether the correct oligomerizing form of SH is tetrameric or pentameric was found to be harder, as the complete set for both of oligomeric forms could be formed using a C
RMSD cutoff <1.0 Å. The C
RMSD between all the structures in the tetrameric complete set is less than that obtained for the pentameric complete set (0.82 Å and 0.99 Å, respectively).
Nevertheless, further evidence points to the fact that the SH protein does not form a tetrameric structure: (1) The C
RMSD obtained by superimposing amino acids 2341 of the tetrameric long TM segment structure upon those of the tetrameric short TM segment structure, is 4.58 Å, and (2) a shift of the
angles of 90°. Clearly, the results obtained when simulating a homotetrameric assembly depend, therefore, on the construct simulated. This would indicate that the hypothesized tetramer structure is unstable.
On the other hand, superimposing the results of the short TM segment and long TM segment obtained when simulating SH as a homopentamer revealed a much higher degree of similarity: C
RMSD of 1.9 Å and a 
= 30°, pointing toward a stable conformation. Therefore, the results point to the fact that the SH protein oligomers into a homopentameric, channel-like structure (Fig. 9
), whose minimal pore diameter is 1.46 Å.
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| 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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