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1 Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1Y6, Canada
2 Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA
Reprint requests to: Kalle Gehring, Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, 3655 Promenade Sir William Osler, Montreal, QC H3G 1Y6, Canada; e-mail: kalle.gehring{at}mcgill.ca; fax: (514) 398-7384.
(RECEIVED January 13, 2005; FINAL REVISION March 7, 2005; ACCEPTED March 10, 2005)
| Abstract |
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-sheets and three
-helices, which shares significant structural similarity to the crystal structure of a hypothetical protein PA5148 from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Previous studies propose YggX as an iron binding protein that is involved in cellular iron trafficking. Our data indicate that the protein alone does not bind iron in vitro, suggesting other cofactors or different conditions may be necessary for metal binding. Keywords: NMR spectroscopy; protein structure; YggX; E. coli; iron-mediated oxidative damage
Abbreviations: HSQC, heteronuclear single quantum coherence NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance NOE, nuclear Overhauser effect RCD, residual dipolar coupling RMSD, root mean square deviation
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/doi/10.1110/ps.051358105.
| Introduction |
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Recent studies have shown that the yggX of Escherichia coli is part of the SoxRS regulon, a group of coregulated genes that code for antioxidant defenses. The regulon is under transcriptional control of the SoxR and SoxS proteins, a sensor for oxidative stress and a transcriptional regulator, respectively (Pomposiello and Demple 2001). Transcriptional profiling studies showed that exposure to superoxide-producing agents or the ectopic expression of the transcriptional regulator SoxS in the absence of stress stimulated the transcription of yggX (Pomposiello et al. 2001). Promoter deletion fusions to a reporter lacZ gene, and gel mobility shift assays with purified SoxS showed that SoxS binds to an unusual site at the yggX promoter. Northern blot analysis of yggX transcription confirmed the observations from the gene array experiments. The yggX is transcribed in two different forms (Pomposiello et al. 2003), a monocystronic transcript containing the yggX gene, and a dicystronic transcript containing yggX and the downstream gene, mltC, which codes for a membrane-bound peptydoglycan hydrolase. The transcriptional regulation of yggX is consistent with the proposed function of YggX as a mediator in intracellular iron transactions.
| Results and Discussion |
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/H
of F7, F10, F20, F74, and F76; C
1/H
1 of H45 and H82; and H
of L67. The high percentage of assignments was important for the success of the automated NOE assignment procedure in CYANA (Guntert et al. 1997). Chemical shifts have been deposited at BMRB (accession code 6453).
Solution structure of YggX
YggX is a single domain protein (Fig. 1
) consisting of two small N-terminal antiparallel
-sheets (T5-F7, E14-E16); a core body comprising three helices: helix
1 (G25-E34), helix
2 (K37-K54), helix
3 (A61-F74); and an unstructured C-terminal extension (E77-H96, plus the C-terminal 6xHis tag). Hydrophobic contacts at the core of YggX are crucial for determining its global fold. In particular, residues from the three helices are at the interior of the protein and make stabilizing contacts (L27, G28, I31, A39, W40, W43, Q47, L50, I51, L67, M71, V72, and L75). In addition, residues in the small loop connecting helices
1 and
2 (I35, S36) are completely protected from the solvent by residues in and adjacent to the
-sheets. This region (T5-Q18) also appears to be important for stabilizing residues at the C termini of helices
1 and
3 and the N terminus of helix
2, with residues C8, G17 and Q18 exhibiting low solvent accessibility.
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1 and
2 being the most protected. Heteronuclear NOE data confirm the C-terminal tail, spanning residues E77-K92 and the 6xHis-tag, to be ill-defined and flexible on the nanosecond time scale, consistent with the large RMSDs exhibited in the structural ensemble (Fig. 2C
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Under the conditions used for NMR structure determination, we were unable to detect iron binding by YggX using an assay as previously reported by Gralnick and Downs (2003). In addition, titration of YggX with both Fe(II) and Fe(III) exhibited no perturbations to the signature 1H-15N HSQC spectrum (data not shown). Thus, under our conditions YggX alone can not bind iron. A critical role for the highly conserved and solitary cysteine residue Cys-7 (Cys-8 in our numbering) was previously proposed (Gralnick and Downs 2003), suggesting it may act as a ligand for iron binding. Our solution structure shows cysteine (Fig. 1C
) to be buried (0% solvent accessibility) and unavailable for binding to iron. Similarly, this cysteine residue in the structural homolog from P. aeruginosa is also completely buried. This does not exclude a role for Cys-8 in iron binding, which could occur via local unfolding induced by interactions with other protein cofactors or under other solution conditions. Alternatively, loss of iron chelating upon mutation of this cysteine may arise from loss of structure of this highly buried residue. Clearly, more detailed experiments are required to address this issue.
| Conclusions |
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-sheet, and an unstructured C-terminal tail. Under our conditions, YggX alone was unable to bind iron; indicating that either other cofactors or proteins are necessary or other specific conditions are needed for iron recognition. | Materials and methods |
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- D-galactopyranoside was added to the culture and shaken for 3 h to induce expression of the YggX His-tag fusion protein.
Purification and characterization of YggX
Harvested cells were resuspended in lysis buffer (5mM imidazole, 50 mM HEPES, 500 mM NaCl, 5% glycerol, 100 µg/mL lysozyme, 1 mM of the protease inhibitor PMSF at pH 7.5) and disrupted by sonication. Total lysate was centrifuged and supernatant collected for subsequent purification steps. Histidine-tagged YggX was isolated by standard protocols using affinity chromatography with Ni2+-loaded Sepharose and further purified by HPLC gel filtration (HiLoad 16/60 Superdex 75, Amersham Biosciences). Sequence composition and characterization of YggX was completed by DNA sequencing and ESI mass spectrometry. Two cloning artifacts were present in the recombinant YggX protein. At the N terminus, a glycine residue was inserted after the initial methionine residue, and at the C terminus, an eight-residue Leu-Glu-His6 affinity-tag was added.
NMR spectroscopy
For NMR analysis, purified recombinant YggX was exchanged by gel-filtration into buffer containing 50 mM sodium phosphate, 150 mM NaCl, and 1 mM NaN3, and 10% D2O (pH 6.3). All NMR spectra were recorded at 303 K on a Bruker Avance DRX 600-MHz spectrometer equipped with a triple-resonance CryoProbe and processed with NMRPipe (Delaglio et al. 1995). Backbone 1H, 13C, and 15N assignments were completed from CBCA(CO)NH, HNCACB, and HBHA(CBCACO)NH spectra. 1H, 13C, and 15N side-chain assignments were obtained by analysis of the H(CC)(CO)NH, C(C)(CO)NH, and HCCH-TOCSY experiments. Aromatic 1H/13C ring assignments were obtained from constant time two-dimensional HBCBCGCDHD and HBCBCGCDCEHE spectra. All NMR data were analyzed by using NMRView (Johnson and Blevins 1994) and in-house scripts. 1H, 13C, and 15N chemical shifts were referenced to DSS according to the IUPAC recommendation (Markely et al. 1998). Distance constraints were obtained from a simultaneous three-dimensional 13C/15N-edited NOESY experiment (
m = 120 msec) in 90% H2O/10% D2O, and 13C-edited NOESY (
m = 100 msec) and 13C-edited NOESY (aromatic region) (
m = 100 msec) experiments acquired in 99.9% D2O. A four-dimensional 13C-13C NOESY experiment with a mixing time of 80 msec was also recorded to confirm a number of long range constraints but was not used to derive distance restraints. Additional restraints used in structure calculations were dihedral restraints, derived from 3JHN-C
coupling constants obtained from the HNHA experiment (Kuboniwa et al. 1994), and 1H-15N residual dipolar couplings extracted from comparison of IPAP-HSQC experiments recorded on YggX with and without 8 mg/mL Pf1 phage (Ottiger and Bax 1998).
NMR structure calculation
A set of unambiguous NOE constraints were extracted from the NOESY spectra and used in conjunction with dihedral angle restraints to generate a preliminary fold of YggX using CNS 1.1 (Brunger et al. 1998). The resulting structures were used as model templates for automated assignment of NOESY cross peaks (Herrmann et al. 2002) and structure calculation with torsion angle dynamics using CYANA 2.0 (Guntert et al. 1997). The standard CYANA protocol of seven iterative cycles of NOE assignment and structure calculation, followed by a final structure calculation, was applied. The resulting structures were refined with dihedral angle and residual dipolar coupling restraints in addition to 2059 NOE restraints obtained from CYANA using the standard CNS refinement protocol. Initial axial and rhombic components of the alignment tensor were obtained from the histogram method (Clore et al. 1998a) and optimized by a grid search (Clore et al. 1998b) and determined to be Da = 12.5 and R = 0.3. The 20 lowest energy structures with the fewest violations were selected to represent the YggX structure. No NOE violations >0.2 Å were observed. Structural statistics for this ensemble as calculated by CNS (Brunger et al. 1998), PROCHECK (Laskowski et al. 1996), and SSIA (Zweckstetter and Bax 2000) are summarized in Table 1
. The coordinates have been deposited in the RCSB under PDB code 1YHD
[PDB]
.
Titration of YggX with iron and in vitro binding assay
For the following experiments, purified YggX was exchanged into the NMR assay buffer 50 mM MES, 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM NaN3, and 10% D2O (pH 6.3) using a PD-10 gel-filtration column. Iron titration experiments were carried out on a 0.5 mM 15N-labeled YggX sample by addition of up to a three-fold excess of Fe(II) (FeSO4) or Fe(III) (FeCl3) and monitoring of the perturbations in chemical shifts of amide signals from the 15N-1H HSQC spectrum. Minimal changes in pH and volume were ensured throughout. All spectra were acquired on a Bruker 600-MHz AVANCE spectrometer at 303 K. Detection of chelatable Fe(II) by purified YggX in vitro were carried out similarly to a previously described assay (Gralnick and Downs 2003) in our solution conditions. Briefly, varying concentrations of protein (a final of 0200 µM) were distributed in 1-mL aliquots containing our NMR assay buffer and freshly prepared FeSO4 at a final concentration of 100 µM. Chelatable Fe(II) was detected by adding 1, 10-phenanthroline (a final of 500 µM) to each cuvette, incubated for 30 min at 25°C, and then measured at an absorbance of 510 nm using a Varian Cary 1 Bio UV-VIS spectrophotometer.
| Acknowledgments |
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Note added in proof
During the submission of this manuscript, the solution structure of YggX from S. enterica was released (PDB 1XS8 [PDB] ). YggX from both S. enterica and E. coli are nearly identical, having 99% sequence similarity (88% identity), a DALI Z-score of 8.8 and an RMSD of 2.23 Å over their backbone atom (478 for E. coli and 377 for S. enterica). We also note that similar to the E. coli and P. arguinosa structures, the single cysteine residue in S. enterica YggX is also completely buried.
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