scholarly journals Crystallization of a fungal lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase expressed from glycoengineeredPichia pastorisfor X-ray and neutron diffraction

Author(s):  
William B. O'Dell ◽  
Paul D. Swartz ◽  
Kevin L. Weiss ◽  
Flora Meilleur

Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) are carbohydrate-disrupting enzymes secreted by bacteria and fungi that break glycosidic bondsviaan oxidative mechanism. Fungal LPMOs typically act on cellulose and can enhance the efficiency of cellulose-hydrolyzing enzymes that release soluble sugars for bioethanol production or other industrial uses. The enzyme PMO-2 fromNeurospora crassa(NcPMO-2) was heterologously expressed inPichia pastoristo facilitate crystallographic studies of the fungal LPMO mechanism. Diffraction resolution and crystal morphology were improved by expressingNcPMO-2 from a glycoengineered strain ofP. pastorisand by the use of crystal seeding methods, respectively. These improvements resulted in high-resolution (1.20 Å) X-ray diffraction data collection at 100 K and the production of a largeNcPMO-2 crystal suitable for room-temperature neutron diffraction data collection to 2.12 Å resolution.

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (11) ◽  
pp. 1448-1452 ◽  
Author(s):  
John-Paul Bacik ◽  
Sophanit Mekasha ◽  
Zarah Forsberg ◽  
Andrey Kovalevsky ◽  
Jay C. Nix ◽  
...  

Bacteria and fungi express lytic polysaccharide monooxgyenase (LPMO) enzymes that act in conjunction with canonical hydrolytic sugar-processing enzymes to rapidly convert polysaccharides such as chitin, cellulose and starch to single monosaccharide products. In order to gain a better understanding of the structure and oxidative mechanism of these enzymes, large crystals (1–3 mm3) of a chitin-processing LPMO from the Gram-positive soil bacteriumJonesia denitrificanswere grown and screened for their ability to diffract neutrons. In addition to the collection of neutron diffraction data, which were processed to 2.1 Å resolution, a high-resolution room-temperature X-ray diffraction data set was collected and processed to 1.1 Å resolution in space groupP212121. To our knowledge, this work marks the first successful neutron crystallographic experiment on an LPMO. Joint X-ray/neutron refinement of the resulting data will reveal new details of the structure and mechanism of this recently discovered class of enzymes.


2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 1113-1120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esko Oksanen ◽  
François Dauvergne ◽  
Adrian Goldman ◽  
Monika Budayova-Spano

H atoms play a central role in enzymatic mechanisms, but H-atom positions cannot generally be determined by X-ray crystallography. Neutron crystallography, on the other hand, can be used to determine H-atom positions but it is experimentally very challenging. Yeast inorganic pyrophosphatase (PPase) is an essential enzyme that has been studied extensively by X-ray crystallography, yet the details of the catalytic mechanism remain incompletely understood. The temperature instability of PPase crystals has in the past prevented the collection of a neutron diffraction data set. This paper reports how the crystal growth has been optimized in temperature-controlled conditions. To stabilize the crystals during neutron data collection a Peltier cooling device that minimizes the temperature gradient along the capillary has been developed. This device allowed the collection of a full neutron diffraction data set.


Author(s):  
Giulia Novelli ◽  
Charles J. McMonagle ◽  
Florian Kleemiss ◽  
Michael Probert ◽  
Horst Puschmann ◽  
...  

The crystal structure of the monoclinic polymorph of the primary amino acid L-histidine has been determined for the first time by single-crystal neutron diffraction, while that of the orthorhombic polymorph has been reinvestigated with an untwinned crystal, improving the experimental precision and accuracy. For each polymorph, neutron diffraction data were collected at 5, 105 and 295 K. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction experiments were also performed at the same temperatures. The two polymorphs, whose crystal packing is interpreted by intermolecular interaction energies calculated using the Pixel method, show differences in the energy and geometry of the hydrogen bond formed along the c direction. Taking advantage of the X-ray diffraction data collected at 5 K, the precision and accuracy of the new Hirshfeld atom refinement method implemented in NoSpherA2 were probed choosing various settings of the functionals and basis sets, together with the use of explicit clusters of molecules and enhanced rigid-body restraints for H atoms. Equivalent atomic coordinates and anisotropic displacement parameters were compared and found to agree well with those obtained from the corresponding neutron structural models.


2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Coome ◽  
A. E. Goeta ◽  
J. A. K. Howard ◽  
M. R. Probert

X-ray diffraction experiments at very low temperatures require samples to be isolated from atmospheric conditions and held under vacuum. These conditions are usually maintainedviathe use of beryllium chambers, which also scatter X-rays, causing unwanted contamination of the sample's diffraction pattern. The removal of this contamination requires novel data-collection and processing procedures to be employed. Herein a new approach is described, which utilizes the differences in origin of scattering vectors from the sample and the beryllium to eliminate non-sample scattering. The programMasqueradehas been written to remove contaminated regions of the diffraction data from the processing programs. Coupled with experiments at different detector distances, it allows for the acquisition of decontaminated data. Studies of several single crystals have shown that this approach increases data quality, highlighted by the improvement in internal agreement factor with the test case of cytidine presented herein.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (10) ◽  
pp. 949-952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia C. Capelli ◽  
Hans-Beat Bürgi ◽  
Sax A. Mason ◽  
Dylan Jayatilaka

Neutron diffraction data have been collected at 12, 50, 150 and 295 K for the dipeptide glycyl-L-alanine, C5H10N2O3, in order to obtain accurate positional and anisotropic displacement parameters for the H atoms. The values of these parameters serve as a benchmark for assessing the equivalent parameters obtained from a so-called Hirshfeld-atom refinement of X-ray diffraction data described elsewhere [Capelliet al.(2014).IUCrJ,1, 361–379]. The flexibility of the glycyl-L-alanine molecule in the solid and the hydrogen-bonding interactions as a function of temperature are also considered.


Author(s):  
Gabriela C. Schröder ◽  
William B. O'Dell ◽  
Paul D. Swartz ◽  
Flora Meilleur

Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) are copper-center enzymes that are involved in the oxidative cleavage of the glycosidic bond in crystalline cellulose and other polysaccharides. The LPMO reaction is initiated by the addition of a reductant and oxygen to ultimately form an unknown activated copper–oxygen species that is responsible for polysaccharide-substrate H-atom abstraction. Given the sensitivity of metalloproteins to radiation damage, neutron protein crystallography provides a nondestructive technique for structural characterization while also informing on the positions of H atoms. Neutron cryo-crystallography permits the trapping of catalytic intermediates, thereby providing insight into the protonation states and chemical nature of otherwise short-lived species in the reaction mechanism. To characterize the reaction-mechanism intermediates of LPMO9D from Neurospora crassa, a cryo-neutron diffraction data set was collected from an ascorbate-reduced crystal. A second neutron diffraction data set was collected at room temperature from an LPMO9D crystal exposed to low-pH conditions to probe the protonation states of ionizable groups involved in catalysis under acidic conditions.


1999 ◽  
Vol 55 (10) ◽  
pp. 1718-1725 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Pflugrath

X-ray diffraction images from two-dimensional position-sensitive detectors can be characterized as thick or thin, depending on whether the rotation-angle increment per image is greater than or less than the crystal mosaicity, respectively. The expectations and consequences of the processing of thick and thin images in terms of spatial overlap, saturated pixels, X-ray background andI/σ(I) are discussed. Thed*TREKsoftware suite for processing diffraction images is briefly introduced, and results fromd*TREKare compared with those from another popular package.


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