Surface Engineering of Top7 to Facilitate Structure Determination

Top7 is a de novo designed protein whose amino acid sequence has no evolutional trace. Such a property makes Top7 a suitable scaffold for studying the pure nature of protein and protein engineering applications. To use Top7 as an engineering scaffold, we initially attempted structure determination and found that crystals of our construct, which lacked the terminal hexahistidine tag, showed weak diffraction in X-ray structure determination. Thus, we decided to introduce surface residue mutations to facilitate crystal structure determination. The resulting surface mutants, Top7sm1 and Top7sm2, crystallized easily and diffracted to the resolution around 1.7 Å. Despite the improved data, we could not finalize the structures due to high R values. Although we could not identify the origin of the high R values of the surface mutants, we found that all the structures shared common packing architecture with consecutive intermolecular β-sheet formation aligned in one direction. Thus, we mutated the intermolecular interface to disrupt the intermolecular β-sheet formation, expecting to form a new crystal packing. The resulting mutant, Top7sm2-I68R, formed new crystal packing interactions as intended and diffracted to the resolution of 1.4 Å. The surface mutations contributed to crystal packing and high resolution. We finalized the structure model with the R/Rfree values of 0.20/0.24. Top7sm2-I68R can be a useful model protein due to its convenient structure determination.

Identification of glutamine synthetase as a contryphan-Bt binding protein by His-tag pull-down

Background: Contryphan-Bt is a D-tryptophan-containing disulfide-constrained decapeptide recently isolated from the venom of Conus betulinus. The molecular targets of contryphans are controversial, and the identification of its interacting proteins may be of great importance. Methods: His-tag pull-down assays were performed to investigate intracellular binding proteins of contryphan-Bt from rat brain lysate. Bt-Acp-[His]6, a contryphan-Bt derivative containing hexahistidine tag, was synthesized and used as the bait. As a control, Acp-[His]6 was used to exclude nonspecific bindings. Results: Glutamine synthetase was identified as a potential contryphan-Bt binding protein by pull-down assays and subsequent LC-MS/MS. The binding of contryphan-Bt to glutamine synthetase was confirmed and determined using microscale thermophoresis, with a Kd of 74.02 ± 2.8 μM. The binding did not affect glutamine synthetase activity, suggesting that the interaction site was distinct from the catalytic center. Conclusions: Glutamine synthetase was identified as a novel contryphan-Bt binding protein. This is the first report in which the conopeptide binds to an intracellular protein.

EXPRESSION OF THE STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS LUKE GENE IN THE ESCHERICHIA COLI BL21(DE3) STRAIN

Two-component leukotoxins are important virulence factors for Staphylococcus aureus. Despite efforts made to study S. aureus leukotoxins, the direct mechanism of action of these toxins during infection has not been determined. However, the observation that deletion of LukED significantly attenuates highly virulent S. aureus strains supports the hypothesis that selective inhibition of LukE / D may be useful in the development of new aspects of S. aureus infection control. For this purpose, this work was carried out to test the expression and obtain a recombinant form of the LukE protein in E.coli cells. The LukE gene was cloned into the pET28-c (+) / GFP vector containing the gfp gene. Two fused genes carrying a hexahistidine tag were expressed in cells of the E. coli BL21(DE3) strain. It was found that the 6His-GFP-LucE protein aggregates in inclusion bodies. 6His-GFP-LucE was washed out of inclusion bodies with high molar urea. The 6His-GFP-LucE protein was purified by metal affinity chromatography. Research results can be applied to obtain recombinant protein including strategies for inhibition of toxin activity.

Behavior control of membrane-less protein liquid condensates with metal ion-induced phase separation

Phase separation of specific biomolecules into liquid droplet-like condensates is a key mechanism to form membrane-less organelles, which spatio-temporally organize diverse biochemical processes in cells. To investigate the working principles of these biomolecular condensates as dynamic reaction centers, precise control of diverse condensate properties is essential. Here, we design a strategy for metal ion-induced clustering of minimal protein modules to produce liquid protein condensates, the properties of which can be widely varied by simple manipulation of the protein clustering systems. The droplet forming-minimal module contains only a single receptor protein and a binding ligand peptide with a hexahistidine tag for divalent metal ion-mediated clustering. A wide range of protein condensate properties such as droplet forming tendency, droplet morphology, inside protein diffusivity, protein recruitment, and droplet density can be varied by adjusting the nature of receptor/ligand pairs or used metal ions, metal/protein ratios, incubation time, binding motif variation on recruited proteins, and even spacing between receptor/ligand pairs and the hexahistidine tag. We also demonstrate metal-ion-induced protein phase separation in cells. The present phase separation strategy provides highly versatile protein condensates, which will greatly facilitate investigation of molecular and structural codes of droplet-forming proteins and the monitoring of biomolecular behaviors inside diverse protein condensates.

Improved Production and Biophysical Analysis of Recombinant Silicatein-α

Silicatein-α is a hydrolase found in siliceous sea sponges with a unique ability to condense and hydrolyse silicon–oxygen bonds. The enzyme is thus of interest from the perspective of its unusual enzymology, and for potential applications in the sustainable synthesis of siloxane-containing compounds. However, research into this enzyme has previously been hindered by the tendency of silicatein-α towards aggregation and insolubility. Herein, we report the development of an improved method for the production of a trigger factor-silicatein fusion protein by switching the previous hexahistidine tag for a Strep-II tag, resulting in 244-fold improvement in protein yield compared to previous methods. Light scattering and thermal denaturation analyses show that under the best storage conditions, although oligomerisation is never entirely abolished, these nanoscale aggregates of the Strep-tagged protein exhibit improved colloidal stability and solubility. Enzymatic assays show that the Strep-tagged protein retains catalytic competency, but exhibits lower activity compared to the His6-tagged protein. These results suggest that the hexahistidine tag is capable of non-specific catalysis through their imidazole side chains, highlighting the importance of careful consideration when selecting a purification tag. Overall, the Strep-tagged fusion protein reported here can be produced to a higher yield, exhibits greater stability, and allows the native catalytic properties of this protein to be assessed.

Purification and crystallographic analysis of a FAD-dependent halogenase fromStreptomycessp. JCM9888

A new FAD (flavin adenine dinucleotide)-dependent halogenase HalY fromStreptomycessp. JCM9888 was reported to be involved in the regioselective halogenation of adenine. HalY is a variant B FAD-dependent halogenase that is most similar to the halogenase PltA involved in pyoluteorin biosynthesis. This study reports the overexpression and purification of HalY with an N-terminal hexahistidine tag, followed by crystallization experiments and X-ray crystallographic analysis. HalY was purified as a monomer in solution and crystallized to give X-ray diffraction to a resolution of 1.7 Å. The crystal belonged to the monoclinic space groupP21, with unit-cell parametersa= 41.4,b= 113.4,c= 47.6 Å, α = γ = 90, β = 107.4°, and contained one monomer of HalY in the asymmetric unit, with a calculated Matthews coefficient of 2.3 Å3 Da−1and a solvent content of 46%. The structure of the halogenase CndH was used as a search model in molecular replacement to obtain the initial model of HalY. Manual model building and structure refinement of HalY are in progress.

Disruption of gingipain oligomerization into non-covalent cell-surface attached complexes

RgpA and Kgp gingipains are non-covalent complexes of endoprotease catalytic and hemagglutinin-adhesin domains on the surface of Porphyromonas gingivalis. A motif conserved in each domain has been suggested to function as an oligomerization motif. We tested this hypothesis by mutating motif residues to hexahistidine or insertion of hexahistidine tag to disrupt the motif within the Kgp catalytic domain. All modifications led to the secretion of entire Kgp activity into the growth media, predominantly in a form without functional His-tag. This confirmed the role of the conserved motif in correct posttranslational proteolytic processing and assembly of the multidomain complexes.