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Abstract: A family of leucine-rich-repeat-containing G-protein-coupled receptors (LGRs) mediate diverse physiological responses when complexed with their cognate ligands. LGRs are present in all metazoan animals. In humans, the LGR ligands include glycoprotein hormones (GPHs) chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone (hFSH), and thyroid-stimulating hormone (hTSH). These hormones are αβ heterodimers of cystine-knot protein chains. LGRs and their ligand chains have coevolved. Ancestral hormone homologs, present in both bilaterian animals and chordates, are identified as α2β5. We have used single-wavelength anomalous diffraction and molecular replacement to determine structures of the α2β5 hormone from Caenorhabditis elegans (Ceα2β5). Ceα2β5 is unglycosylated, as are many other α2β5 hormones. Both Hsα2β5, the human homolog of Ceα2β5, and hTSH activate the same receptor (hTSHR). Despite having little sequence similarity to vertebrate GPHs, apart from the cysteine patterns from core disulfide bridges, Ceα2β5 is generally similar in structure to these counterparts; however, its α2 and β5 subunits are more symmetric as compared with α and β of hCG and hFSH. This quasisymmetry suggests a hypothetical homodimeric antecedent of the α2β5 and αβ heterodimers. Known structures together with AlphaFold models from the sequences for other LGR ligands provide representatives for the molecular evolution of LGR ligands from early metazoans through the present-day GPHs. The experimental Ceα2β5 structure validates its AlphaFold model, and thus also that for Hsα2β5; and interfacial characteristics in a model for the Hsα2β5:hTSHR complex are similar to those found in an experimental hTSH:hTSHR structure.
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Dec 2022
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I03-Macromolecular Crystallography
I04-Macromolecular Crystallography
VMXi-Versatile Macromolecular Crystallography in situ
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Abhinandan V.
Murthy
,
Ramita
Sulu
,
Andrey
Lebedev
,
Antti M.
Salo
,
Kati
Korhonen
,
Rajaram
Venkatesan
,
Hongmin
Tu
,
Ulrich
Bergmann
,
Janne
Jänis
,
Mikko
Laitaoja
,
Lloyd
Ruddock
,
Johanna
Myllyharju
,
M. Kristian
Koski
,
Rik. K.
Wierenga
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[20001, 13172, 19951]
Open Access
Abstract: Collagen prolyl 4-hydroxylases (C-P4H) are α2β2 tetramers, which catalyze the prolyl 4-hydroxylation of procollagen chains, allowing for the formation of the stable triple-helical collagen structure in the endoplasmic reticulum. The C-P4H α-subunit provides the N-terminal dimerization domain, the middle peptide-substrate-binding domain (PSB), and the C-terminal catalytic (CAT) domain, while the β-subunit is identical to the enzyme protein disulfide isomerase (PDI). The structure of the N-terminal part of the α-subunit (N-terminal and PSB domain) is known, but the structures of the PSB-CAT linker region and the CAT domain as well as its mode of assembly with the β/PDI-subunit, are not known. Here we report the crystal structure of the CAT domain of human C-P4H-II complexed with the intact β/PDI-subunit, at 3.8Å resolution. The CAT domain interacts with the a, b’, and a’ domains of the β/PDI-subunit, such that the CAT active site is facing bulk solvent. The structure also shows that the C-P4H-II CAT domain has a unique N-terminal extension, consisting of α-helices and a β-strand, which is the edge strand of its major antiparallel β-sheet. This extra region of the CAT domain interacts tightly with the β/PDI-subunit, showing that the CAT-PDI interface includes an inter-subunit disulfide bridge with the a’ domain and tight hydrophobic interactions with the b’ domain. Using this new structural information, the structure of the mature C-P4H-II α2β2 tetramer is predicted. The model suggests that the CAT active site properties are modulated by α-helices of the N-terminal dimerization domains of both subunits of the α2-dimer.
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Oct 2022
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I04-Macromolecular Crystallography
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Olga V.
Moroz
,
Elena
Blagova
,
Andrey A.
Lebedev
,
Filomeno
Sanchez Rodriguez
,
Daniel J.
Rigden
,
Jeppe
Wegener Tams
,
Reinhard
Wilting
,
Jan Kjølhede
Vester
,
Emily
Longhi
,
Gustav
Hammerich Hansen
,
Kristian
Bertel Rømer Mørkeberg Krogh
,
Roland A.
Pache
,
Gideon
Davies
,
Keith S.
Wilson
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[18598]
Abstract: β-Galactosidases catalyse the hydrolysis of lactose into galactose and glucose; as an alternative reaction, some β-galactosidases also catalyse the formation of galactooligosaccharides by transglycosylation. Both reactions have industrial importance: lactose hydrolysis is used to produce lactose-free milk, while galactooligosaccharides have been shown to act as prebiotics. For some multi-domain β-galactosidases, the hydrolysis/transglycosylation ratio can be modified by the truncation of carbohydrate-binding modules. Here, an analysis of BbgIII, a multidomain β-galactosidase from Bifidobacterium bifidum, is presented. The X-ray structure has been determined of an intact protein corresponding to a gene construct of eight domains. The use of evolutionary covariance-based predictions made sequence docking in low-resolution areas of the model spectacularly easy, confirming the relevance of this rapidly developing deep-learning-based technique for model building. The structure revealed two alternative orientations of the CBM32 carbohydrate-binding module relative to the GH2 catalytic domain in the six crystallographically independent chains. In one orientation the CBM32 domain covers the entrance to the active site of the enzyme, while in the other orientation the active site is open, suggesting a possible mechanism for switching between the two activities of the enzyme, namely lactose hydrolysis and transgalactosylation. The location of the carbohydrate-binding site of the CBM32 domain on the opposite site of the module to where it comes into contact with the catalytic GH2 domain is consistent with its involvement in adherence to host cells. The role of the CBM32 domain in switching between hydrolysis and transglycosylation modes offers protein-engineering opportunities for selective β-galactosidase modification for industrial purposes in the future.
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Dec 2021
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I02-Macromolecular Crystallography
I03-Macromolecular Crystallography
I04-Macromolecular Crystallography
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Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[302]
Open Access
Abstract: Twinning is a crystal growth anomaly, which has posed a challenge in macromolecular crystallography (MX) since the earliest days. Many approaches have been used to treat twinned data in order to extract structural information. However, in most cases it is usually simpler to rescreen for new crystallization conditions that yield an untwinned crystal form or, if possible, collect data from non-twinned parts of the crystal. Here, we report 11 structures of engineered variants of the E. coli enzyme N-acetyl-neuraminic lyase which, despite twinning and incommensurate modulation, have been successfully indexed, solved and deposited. These structures span a resolution range of 1.45–2.30 Å, which is unusually high for datasets presenting such lattice disorders in MX and therefore these data provide an excellent test set for improving and challenging MX data processing programs.
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Oct 2018
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I04-Macromolecular Crystallography
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Adam J.
Simpkin
,
Felix
Simkovic
,
Jens M. H.
Thomas
,
Martin
Savko
,
Andrey
Lebedev
,
Ville
Uski
,
Charles
Ballard
,
Marcin
Wojdyr
,
Rui
Wu
,
Ruslan
Sanishvili
,
Yibin
Xu
,
María-Natalia
Lisa
,
Alejandro
Buschiazzo
,
William
Shepard
,
Daniel J.
Rigden
,
Ronan M.
Keegan
Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[15945]
Open Access
Abstract: The conventional approach to finding structurally similar search models for use in molecular replacement (MR) is to use the sequence of the target to search against those of a set of known structures. Sequence similarity often correlates with structure similarity. Given sufficient similarity, a known structure correctly positioned in the target cell by the MR process can provide an approximation to the unknown phases of the target. An alternative approach to identifying homologous structures suitable for MR is to exploit the measured data directly, comparing the lattice parameters or the experimentally derived structure-factor amplitudes with those of known structures. Here, SIMBAD, a new sequence-independent MR pipeline which implements these approaches, is presented. SIMBAD can identify cases of contaminant crystallization and other mishaps such as mistaken identity (swapped crystallization trays), as well as solving unsequenced targets and providing a brute-force approach where sequence-dependent search-model identification may be nontrivial, for example because of conformational diversity among identifiable homologues. The program implements a three-step pipeline to efficiently identify a suitable search model in a database of known structures. The first step performs a lattice-parameter search against the entire Protein Data Bank (PDB), rapidly determining whether or not a homologue exists in the same crystal form. The second step is designed to screen the target data for the presence of a crystallized contaminant, a not uncommon occurrence in macromolecular crystallography. Solving structures with MR in such cases can remain problematic for many years, since the search models, which are assumed to be similar to the structure of interest, are not necessarily related to the structures that have actually crystallized. To cater for this eventuality, SIMBAD rapidly screens the data against a database of known contaminant structures. Where the first two steps fail to yield a solution, a final step in SIMBAD can be invoked to perform a brute-force search of a nonredundant PDB database provided by the MoRDa MR software. Through early-access usage of SIMBAD, this approach has solved novel cases that have otherwise proved difficult to solve.
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Jul 2018
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Liz
Potterton
,
Jon
Agirre
,
Charles
Ballard
,
Kevin
Cowtan
,
Eleanor
Dodson
,
Phil R.
Evans
,
Huw T.
Jenkins
,
Ronan
Keegan
,
Eugene
Krissinel
,
Kyle
Stevenson
,
Andrey
Lebedev
,
Stuart J.
Mcnicholas
,
Robert A.
Nicholls
,
Martin
Noble
,
Navraj S.
Pannu
,
Christian
Roth
,
George
Sheldrick
,
Pavol
Skubak
,
Johan
Turkenburg
,
Ville
Uski
,
Frank
Von Delft
,
David
Waterman
,
Keith
Wilson
,
Martyn
Winn
,
Marcin
Wojdyr
Open Access
Abstract: The CCP4 (Collaborative Computational Project, Number 4) software suite for macromolecular structure determination by X-ray crystallography groups brings together many programs and libraries that, by means of well established conventions, interoperate effectively without adhering to strict design guidelines. Because of this inherent flexibility, users are often presented with diverse, even divergent, choices for solving every type of problem. Recently, CCP4 introduced CCP4i2, a modern graphical interface designed to help structural biologists to navigate the process of structure determination, with an emphasis on pipelining and the streamlined presentation of results. In addition, CCP4i2 provides a framework for writing structure-solution scripts that can be built up incrementally to create increasingly automatic procedures.
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Feb 2018
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I03-Macromolecular Crystallography
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Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[9948]
Abstract: Bacterial phosphoinositide-specific phospholipases C (PI-PLCs) are the smallest members of the PI-PLC family, which includes much larger mammalian enzymes responsible for signal transduction as well as enzymes from protozoan parasites, yeast and plants. Eukaryotic PI-PLCs have calcium in the active site, but this is absent in the known structures of Gram-positive bacteria, where its role is instead played by arginine. In addition to their use in a number of industrial applications, the bacterial enzymes attract special interest because they can serve as convenient models of the catalytic domains of eukaryotic enzymes for in vitro activity studies. Here, the structure of a PI-PLC from Pseudomonas sp. 62186 is reported, the first from a Gram-negative bacterium and the first of a native bacterial PI-PLC with calcium present in the active site. Solution of the structure posed particular problems owing to the low sequence identity of available homologous structures. Its dependence on calcium for catalysis makes this enzyme a better model for studies of the mammalian PI-PLCs than the previously used calcium-independent bacterial PI-PLCs.
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Jan 2017
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I04-Macromolecular Crystallography
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Open Access
Abstract: Post-translational modification of proteins is a ubiquitous mechanism of signal transduction in all kingdoms of life. One such modification is addition of O-linked N-acetylglucosamine to serine or threonine residues, known as O-GlcNAcylation. This unusual type of glycosylation is thought to be restricted to nucleocytoplasmic proteins of eukaryotes and is mediated by a pair of O-GlcNAc transferase and O-GlcNAc hydrolase enzymes operating on a large number of substrate proteins. Protein O-GlcNAcylation is responsive to glucose and flux through the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway. Thus, a close relationship is thought to exist between the level of O-GlcNAc proteins within and the general metabolic state of the cell. While isolated apparent orthologues of these enzymes are present in bacterial genomes, their biological functions remain largely unexplored. It is possible that understanding the function of these proteins will allow development of reductionist models to uncover the principles of O-GlcNAc signalling. Here, we identify orthologues of both O-GlcNAc cycling enzymes in the genome of the thermophilic eubacterium Thermobaculum terrenum. The O-GlcNAcase and O-GlcNAc transferase are co-expressed and, like their mammalian orthologues, localise to the cytoplasm. The O-GlcNAcase orthologue possesses activity against O-GlcNAc proteins and model substrates. We describe crystal structures of both enzymes, including an O-GlcNAcase-peptide complex, showing conservation of active sites with the human orthologues. Although in vitro activity of the O-GlcNAc transferase could not be detected, treatment of T. terrenum with an O-GlcNAc transferase inhibitor led to inhibition of growth. T. terrenum may be the first example of a bacterium possessing a functional O-GlcNAc system.
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Oct 2015
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I24-Microfocus Macromolecular Crystallography
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Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[8889, 6851]
Abstract: The presence of pseudo-symmetry in a macromolecular crystal and its interplay with twinning may lead to an incorrect space-group (SG) assignment. Moreover, if the pseudo-symmetry is very close to an exact crystallographic symmetry, the structure can be solved and partially refined in the wrong SG. Typically, in such incorrectly determined structures all or some of the pseudo-symmetry operations are, in effect, taken for crystallographic symmetry operations and vice versa. A mistake only becomes apparent when the Rfree ceases to decrease below 0.39 and further model rebuilding and refinement cannot improve the refinement statistics. If pseudo-symmetry includes pseudo-translation, the uncertainty in SG assignment may be associated with an incorrect choice of origin, as demonstrated by the series of examples provided here. The program Zanuda presented in this article was developed for the automation of SG validation. Zanuda runs a series of refinements in SGs compatible with the observed unit-cell parameters and chooses the model with the highest symmetry SG from a subset of models that have the best refinement statistics.
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Sep 2014
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I03-Macromolecular Crystallography
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Diamond Proposal Number(s):
[8922, 1425, 7131]
Open Access
Abstract: The enzyme 2,4'-dihydroxyacetophenone dioxygenase (DAD) catalyses the conversion of 2,4'-dihydroxyacetophenone to 4-hydroxybenzoic acid and formic acid with the incorporation of molecular oxygen. Whilst the vast majority of dioxygenases cleave within the aromatic ring of the substrate, DAD is very unusual in that it is involved in C-C bond cleavage in a substituent of the aromatic ring. There is evidence that the enzyme is a homotetramer of 20.3 kDa subunits, each containing nonhaem iron, and its sequence suggests that it belongs to the cupin family of dioxygenases. In this paper, the first X-ray structure of a DAD enzyme from the Gram-negative bacterium Alcaligenes sp. 4HAP is reported, at a resolution of 2.2 Å. The structure establishes that the enzyme adopts a cupin fold, forming dimers with a pronounced hydrophobic interface between the monomers. The catalytic iron is coordinated by three histidine residues (76, 78 and 114) within a buried active-site cavity. The iron also appears to be tightly coordinated by an additional ligand which was putatively assigned as a carbonate dianion since this fits the electron density optimally, although it might also be the product formate. The modelled carbonate is located in a position which is highly likely to be occupied by the -hydroxyketone group of the bound substrate during catalysis. Modelling of a substrate molecule in this position indicates that it will interact with many conserved amino acids in the predominantly hydrophobic active-site pocket where it undergoes peroxide radical-mediated heterolysis.
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Sep 2014
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