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1 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and The Sealy Center for Structural Biology & Molecular Biophysics, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas 77555-0647, USA
2 Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70806, USA
(RECEIVED April 27, 2006; FINAL REVISION July 19, 2006; ACCEPTED July 20, 2006)
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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The Escherichia coli yciF gene encodes a 166 amino acid protein (18,597.1 Da) with a calculated isoelectric point of 5.47. The function of YciF is unknown, and although it is conserved across bacterial species, it has no close homologs whose biological function or structure is known.
| Results and Discussion |
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0.5, which led to the apparent R32 space group. The twinning was eliminated by purifying and crystallizing the protein in the presence of EDTA (see Materials and Methods). The untwinned crystals occur in the space group R3, and have a Vm of 2.5 Å3/Da calculated with two molecules in the asymmetric unit.
Monomer structure
The structure was solved by multiple wavelength anomalous diffraction (MAD) and refined to 2.0 Å resolution with a final Rwork and Rfree of 18.3% and 22.4%, respectively. The crystal was found to have two identical chains in the asymmetric unit (Chains A and B). The map displayed clear electron density for 158 residues in Chain A (3161) and 153 residues (4157 residues) in Chain B, and 118 ordered water molecules. The first two and the last five residues in Chain A are disordered, as are the first three and last nine residues in the B chain; no electron density was observed for these regions. The two molecules of the asymmetric unit were found to be nearly identical in their core structure (C
RMSD, 0.309 Å for residues 5150 excluding loop residues 85100), but to differ in this loop, as judged by an overall C
RMSD of 0.729 Å. The crystallographic data are summarized in Table 1.
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-helices: H1 (633), H2 (3863), H3 (7689), H4 (96125), and H5 (129159). The shortest helix (H3) is connected to H2 by a 12 amino acidlong loop. The overall protein fold has been classified as DUF892 (family of several hypothetical bacterial proteins of no known function) by PFAM (v17.0) (Bateman et al. 2004). This fold is shared by at least 57 other proteins in the database. The loop region between H3 and H4 may adopt an ensemble of conformations; this is evident from the temperature factors of the atoms in this loop. The average B-factor for the atoms in the loop H3H4 is 40.38 Å2 for chain A, whereas in chain B it has an average B-factor of 20.55 Å2.
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Analysis of potential ligand-binding sites
Analysis of the YciF structure with CASTp (Liang et al. 1998; Binkowski et al. 2003) allows visualization of the pockets present on the protein surface. There are four distinct pockets per dimer, with P1 and P2 occurring within the core of the four-helix bundles and related by a molecular twofold axis. P1 has a solvent-accessible (SA) area of 62 Å2 and a solvent-accessible volume (SAV) of 11 Å3, while P2 has an SA of 99 Å2 and an SAV of 17 Å3. The numerical and visual differences in P1 and P2 (Fig. 1) indicate that strict twofold symmetry is not obeyed for all side chains of the dimer. The third and largest pocket P3 (SA 352 Å2, SAV 164 Å3) forms at the dimer interface; a fourth, P4 (SA 154 Å2, SAV 186 Å3) lies just below P3, with its opening aligned with the entrance of P3.
Pockets P3 and P4 occur near, and are related by the twofold axis, and have potential ligand- or metal-binding sites involving Asp16, Cys75, and Tyr122' from the opposite monomer. Additionally, the pockets are lined with polar residues: His12, and His111' from the opposite monomer, and the pocket shapes differ (Fig. 1). An analysis of the sequence alignment with other bacterial homologs shows that His111, Cys75, and Asp16 are conserved across all species, and that His12 is conserved in 10 out of the 15 homologs (Fig. 2), suggesting conservation of the pocket. The overall appearance of the pocket suggests a binding site for an ion and/or a small molecule.
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A homology search with DALI reveals the closest matches to be rubrerythrin from Desulfovibrio vulgaris (1RYT; RMSD 2.1 Å for 134 C
atoms; deMare et al. 1996), a non-heme iron-containing ferritin from Listeria innocua (1QGH; RMSD 2.2 Å for 137 C
atoms; Ilari et al. 2000), bacterioferritin from Escherichia coli (1BCF; RMSD 2.2 Å for 139 C
atoms; Frolow et al. 1994), and a DNA-binding protein from Halobacterium salinarum (1MOJ, RMSD 2.7 Å for 144 C
atoms; Zeth et al. 2004). The sequence identity with these proteins was found to be between 7% and 16%. A similarity search of the YciF monomer structure against PDB entries using the Molecular Structure Database gave Dlp-2, another iron-binding protein from Bacillus anthracis, as the top hit, with an RMSD of 1.71 Å for 126 residues of chain B matched to 146 residues of the Dlp-2 chain B (1JIG:B; Papinutto et al. 2002). The other top hit was Listeria innocua Dps chain D, RMSD 1.74 Å, for 128 residues chain B of YciF, matched to 150 residues chain D of Dps (2BJY: D; Ilari et al. 2005). Both Dlp-2 and Dps are iron-binding proteins with similar monomer folds: four-helix bundles with a short additional helix that occurs within the connecting loop between the second and third long helices. Similarities between YciF and Dlp-2 or Dps are limited only to the monomer fold, and do not extend to the overall architecture of the molecules. Metal binding in Dps family members occurs at dimer interfaces, while metal binding by YciF is proposed to occur within the monomeric four-helix bundle.
Rubrerythrin and sulerythrin
Rubrerythrin (Rr) was initially isolated from the anaerobic Desulfovibrio vulgaris (deMare et al. 1996). The archeon Pyrococcus furiosus rubrerythrin has peroxidase activity in vitro (Weinberg et al. 2004), but pyrophosphatase (Liu and Le Gall 1990), ferroxidase (Bonomi et al. 1996), and superoxide dismutase (Lehmann et al. 1996) activities have also been reported. The Rr monomer consists of two domains: one, an N-terminal four-helix bundle containing a diiron site similar to hemerythrin, and the other, a C-terminal rubredoxin-like domain with an Fe(SCys)4 site (deMare et al. 1996; Jin et al. 2002; 2004a, b). The two irons are coordinated by five carboxylates and a single His, and are bridged by an oxo ion. Nigerythrin, a rubrerythrin-like protein, shows a 2.0 Å movement of Fe1 from a carboxylate to a histidine residue when converted from the mixed valency Fe2(II)Fe1(III) state to a diferrous state, similar to that seen in Rr, indicating that this is a characteristic feature of the Rr-like diiron proteins (Iyer et al. 2005). Sulerythrin is the first Rr-like protein to be isolated from an aerobe, Sulfolobus tokadaii strain 7. The protein is a homodimer that lacks the C-terminal rubredoxin-like domain and shows binuclear metal binding of Fe/Zn (Fushinobu et al. 2003).
Similarity of YciF to rubrerythrin and sulerythrin
In an alignment of rubrerythrin with YciF, the four helices 1, 2, 4, and 5 overlap clearly with those of the rubrerythrin four-helix bundle (Fig. 3). Alignment of YciF with rubrerythrin places the diiron center of rubrerythrin in the middle of the YciF monomer. One of these metal ions (M1) is placed to be well coordinated by Glu110, His47, and Glu50. The second metal ion (M2) would be coordinated by YciF residues Glu21, Glu113, and Gln54. Glu143 is in a position to serve as a bridging residue between the two metal sites. A structure-based alignment of the YciF and Rr sequences shows conservation of residues at positions Glu20:Glu21 (Rr:YciF), Glu94:Glu110, Glu97:Glu113, and Glu128:Glu143. Sulerythrin has a similar coordination of its diiron center within a four-helix bundle (Fushinobu et al. 2003; Wakagi 2003). Both YciF and sulerythrin lack a rubredoxin domain. Based on these observations, YciF appears to be a member of the Rr family.
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Summary and conclusions
YciF is a protein that is up-regulated when the bacteria encounter stress conditions. Based on the structural comparison of YciF to rubrerythrin, a protein that has a diiron center, and to ferritin and other monooxygenases that are all known to be metal binding, we hypothesize that YciF is a metal-binding protein. The metal-binding sites are proposed to lie in the helix bundle within the two pockets (P1 and P2), which are related by a molecular twofold axis of symmetry, with Glu110, Glu50, and His47 coordinating one metal ion and Glu113, Gln54, and Glu21 coordinating the second ion. Also, Glu143 may act as a bridging residue akin to Glu128 in Rr. The architectural features of YciF are also found associated with other protein functions, such as the manganese catalase domain in the protein bll3758 from Bradyrhizobium japonicum, suggesting a functional role in protecting the cell against oxidative damage.
| Materials and methods |
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Structure determination and refinement
Flash-frozen selenomethionine-labeled YciF crystals were used for data collection. The data sets were collected at the Protein Crystallography MAD beamline at CAMD using a marCCD detector. The data were collected at three wavelengths corresponding to inflection, peak, and remote wavelengths for Se. The images were indexed, integrated, and scaled using HKL2000 (Otwinowski and Minor 1997). The space group was R3, with cell dimensions a=b=79.96 Å, c=131.12 Å,
=
=90°,
=120°. There were two molecules per asymmetric unit, giving a Matthews coefficient of 2.23 Å3/Da, which corresponds to a solvent content of 45% (Matthews 1968).
SOLVE (Terwilliger and Berendzen 1999) was used to find the selenium sites and to calculate the phases. A total of four selenium sites were found. The initial figure of merit (FOM) before solvent flattening was 0.43. Solvent flattening and automated model building were carried out with RESOLVE (Terwilliger 2000); solvent flattening improved the FOM to 0.66. RESOLVE built
70% of the model. Model building and corrections were done using Xfit (McRee 1999). The waters were added manually with Xfit, and using PMB/CNS. The structure refined to a final Rwork of 18.3% and an Rfree of 22.4%, within a resolution range of 502.0 Å, using the programs PMB (Scott et al. 2004) and CNS (Brunger et al. 1998). The model quality was checked using the PROCHECK (Laskowski et al. 1993) in the CCP4 suite (Collaborative Computational Project 1994). The refined model had 96% of its residues in the most favored region of the Ramachandran Plot, 3.7% in the allowed region, and one residue in the disallowed region (ChainA:Asn95); reexamination of the structure very clearly showed the ChainA:Asn95 to be well positioned within the electron density. GETAREA (Fraczkiewicz and Braun 1998) was used to calculate the solvent-accessible surface area. The molecular surface and electrostatic potential were calculated using SwissPDB.
PDB accession numbers
The coordinates and structure factors have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank (accession code 2GS4).
| Footnotes |
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4 These authors contributed equally to this work. ![]()
Reprint requests to: Robert O. Fox, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd., Mail Route 0647, Galveston, TX 77555-0647, USA; e-mail: fox{at}bloch.utmb.edu; fax: (409) 747-4745.
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/doi/10.1110/ps.062307706.
| Acknowledgments |
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