Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: EC:3.1.31.1 (micrococcal nuclease)
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The stability changes in peptides and proteins caused by the substitution of a single amino acid, which can be measured experimentally by the change in folding free energy, are evaluated here using effective potentials derived from known protein structures. The analysis is focused on mutations of residues that are accessible to the solvent. These represent in total 106 mutations, introduced at different sites in barnase, bacteriophage T4 lysozyme and chymotrypsin inhibitor 2, and in a synthetic helical peptide. Assuming that the mutations do not modify the backbone structure, the changes in folding free energies are computed using various types of database-derived potentials and are compared with the measured ones. Distance-dependent residue-residue potentials are found to be inadequate for estimating the stability changes caused by these mutations, as they are dominated by hydrophobic interactions, which do not play an essential role at the protein surface. On the contrary, the potentials based on backbone torsion angle propensities yield quite good results. Indeed, for a subset of 96 out of the 106 mutations, the computed and measured changes in folding free energy correlate with a linear correlation coefficient of 0.87. Moreover, the ten mutations that are excluded from the correlation either seem to cause modifications of the backbone structure or to involve strong hydrophobic interactions, which are atypical for solvent-accessible residues. We find furthermore that raising the ionic strength of the solvent used for measuring the changes in folding free energies improves the correlation, as it tends to mask the electrostatic interactions. When adding to these 106 mutations 44 mutations performed in staphylococcal nuclease and chemotactic protein, which were first discarded because some of them were suspected to affect the backbone conformation or the denatured state, the correlation between measured and computed folding free energy changes remains quite good: the correlation coefficient is 0.86 for 135 out of the 150 mutations. The success of the backbone torsion potentials in predicting stability changes indicates that the approximations made for deriving these potentials are adequate. It suggests moreover that the local interactions along the chain dominate at the protein surface.
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PMID:Stability changes upon mutation of solvent-accessible residues in proteins evaluated by database-derived potentials. 863 71

A new statistical thermodynamic formalism has been developed in order to describe the equilibrium folding pathway of proteins. The resulting formalism allows calculation of the probabilities that individual amino acid residues will be in a native or native-like conformation for any given degree of folding of the protein molecule. The residue probabilities are defined by the probability distribution of conformational states and can be used to calculate experimental quantities like native-state, hydrogen exchange protection factors. A combinatorial algorithm aimed at generating a large ensemble of conformational states (10(4) to 10(6)) using the native structure as a template has been developed. The Gibbs energy and corresponding probability of each conformational state is estimated by using a previously developed structural parametrization of the energetics. The approach has been applied to five different proteins: hen egg-white lysozyme, equine lysozyme, bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor, staphylococcal nuclease and turkey ovomucoid third domain. The validity of the approach has been tested by comparing predicted and experimental hydrogen exchange protection factors. It is shown that for the above proteins 76%, 73%, 74%, 78% and 81% of all observed protection factors are predicted correctly. Furthermore, on average, the magnitude of the predicted protection factors, expressed as apparent free energies per residue deviate less than 1 kcal/mol from those obtained experimentally. These results represent the first attempt at predicting both the location and magnitude of hydrogen exchange protection factors from the high-resolution structure of a protein. The good agreement between experimental and predicted values has permitted a close examination of the nature of the equilibrium folding intermediates existing under conditions of maximal stability of the native state.
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PMID:Structure-based calculation of the equilibrium folding pathway of proteins. Correlation with hydrogen exchange protection factors. 887 52

Temperature-sensitive (Ts) mutants of a protein are an extremely powerful tool for studying protein function in vivo and in cell culture. We have devised a method to predict those residues in a protein sequence that, when appropriately mutated, are most likely to give rise to a Ts phenotype. Since substitutions of buried hydrophobic residues often result in significant destabilization of the protein, our method predicts those residues in the sequence that are likely to be buried in the protein structure. We also indicate a set of amino acid substitutions, which should be made to generate a Ts mutant of the protein. This method requires only the protein sequence. No structural information or homologous sequence information is required. This method was applied to a test data set of 30 nonhomologous protein structures from the Protein Data Bank. All of the residues predicted by the method to be > or = 95% buried were, in fact, buried in the protein crystal structure. In contrast, only 50% of all hydrophobic residues in this data set were > or = 95% buried. This method successfully predicts several known Ts and partially active mutants of T4 lysozyme, lambda repressor, gene V protein, and staphylococcal nuclease. This method also correctly predicts residues that form part of the hydrophobic cores of lambda repressor, myoglobin, and cytochrome b562.
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PMID:A procedure for the prediction of temperature-sensitive mutants of a globular protein based solely on the amino acid sequence. 894 34

An approach to the prediction of mutant stability is described using knowledge of amino acid replacements that are tolerated within the families of homologous proteins of known 3-D structure. Amino acid variations in families of homologous proteins are converted to propensity and substitution tables; these provide quantitative information about the existence of an amino acid in a structural environment and the probability of replacement by any other amino acid. The tables are used to calculate a 'stability difference score', analogous to the difference in free energy between a mutant and the wild type. The method has been developed and tested using the high-resolution structures for T4 lysozyme and 159 site-specific mutants. We show that differences in stability scores are correlated with experimentally observed free energy differences and differences in melting temperature. Blind tests, using only structural information derived from the parent wild-type crystal structures, on a combined set of 83 staphylococcal nuclease and 68 barnase mutants showed a correlation of 0.80 in the predicted stability changes with experimental thermodynamic data. Approximately 86% of the predictions were correctly classified as destabilizing or stabilizing.
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PMID:Prediction of the stability of protein mutants based on structural environment-dependent amino acid substitution and propensity tables. 905 29

The screened Coulomb potential (SCP) method, combined with a quantitative description of the microenvironments around titratable groups, based on the Hydrophobic Fragmental Constants developed by Rekker, has been applied to calculate the pK(a) values of groups embedded in extremely hydrophobic microenvironments in proteins. This type of microenvironment is not common; but constitutes a small class, where the protein's architecture has evolved to lend special properties to the embedded residue. They are of significant interest because they are frequently important in catalysis and in proton and electron transfer reactions. In the SCP treatment these special cases are treated locally and therefore do not affect the accuracy of the pK(a) values calculated for other residues in less hydrophobic environments. Here the calibration of the algorithm is extended with the help of earlier results from lysozyme and of three mutants of staphylococcal nuclease (SNase) that were specially designed to measure the energetics of ionization of titratable groups buried in extremely hydrophobic microenvironments. The calibrated algorithm was subsequently applied to a fourth mutant of SNase and then to a very large dimeric amine oxidase of 1284 residues, where 334 are titratable. The observed pK(a) shifts of the buried residues are large (up to 4.7 pK units), and all cases are well reproduced by the calculations with a root mean square error of 0.22. These results support the hypothesis that protein electrostatics can only be described correctly and self-consistently if the inherent heterogeneity of these systems is properly accounted for.
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PMID:The role of hydrophobic microenvironments in modulating pKa shifts in proteins. 1211 96

The preservation of enzyme activity and protein binding capacity upon protein adsorption at solid interfaces is important for biotechnological and medical applications. Because these properties are partly related to the protein flexibility and mobility, we have studied the internal dynamics and the whole-body reorientational rates of two enzymes, staphylococcal nuclease (SNase) and hen egg white lysozyme, over the temperature range of 20-80 degrees C when the proteins are adsorbed at the silica/water interface and, for comparison, when they are dissolved in buffer. The data were obtained using a combination of two experimental techniques, total internal reflection fluorescence spectroscopy and time-resolved fluorescence anisotropy measurements in the frequency domain, with the protein Trp residues as intrinsic fluorescence probes. It has been found that the internal dynamics and the whole-body rotation of SNase and lysozyme are markedly reduced upon adsorption over large temperature ranges. At elevated temperatures, both protein molecules appear completely immobilized and the fractional amplitudes for the whole-body rotation, which are related to the order parameter for the local rotational freedom of the Trp residues, remain constant and do not approach zero. This behavior indicates that the angular range of the Trp reorientation within the adsorbed proteins is largely restricted even at high temperatures, in contrast to that of the dissolved proteins. The results of this study thus provide a deeper understanding of protein activity at solid surfaces.
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PMID:Reorientational dynamics of enzymes adsorbed on quartz: a temperature-dependent time-resolved TIRF anisotropy study. 1266 61

We model the hydration contribution to short-range electrostatic/dispersion protein interactions embodied in the osmotic second virial coefficient, B(2), by adopting a quasi-chemical description in which water molecules associated with the protein are identified through explicit molecular dynamics simulations. These water molecules reduce the surface complementarity of highly favorable short-range interactions, and therefore can play an important role in mediating protein-protein interactions. Here we examine this quasi-chemical view of hydration by predicting the interaction part of B(2) and comparing our results with those derived from light-scattering measurements of B(2) for staphylococcal nuclease, lysozyme, and chymotrypsinogen at 25 degrees C as a function of solution pH and ionic strength. We find that short-range protein interactions are influenced by water molecules strongly associated with a relatively small fraction of the protein surface. However, the effect of these strongly associated water molecules on the surface complementarity of short-range protein interactions is significant, and must be taken into account for an accurate description of B(2). We also observe remarkably similar hydration behavior for these proteins despite substantial differences in their three-dimensional structures and spatial charge distributions, suggesting a general characterization of protein hydration.
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PMID:Light-scattering studies of protein solutions: role of hydration in weak protein-protein interactions. 1598 Jan 82

Two physicochemical models are proposed for the estimation of both hydrodynamic radius and net charge of a protein when the capillary zone electrophoretic mobility at a given protocol, the set of pK of charged amino acids, and basic data from Protein Data Bank are available. These models also provide a rationale to interpret appropriately the effects of solvent properties on protein hydrodynamic radius and net charge. To illustrate the numerical predictions of these models, experimental data of electrophoretic mobility available in the literature for well-defined protocols are used. Five proteins are considered: lysozyme, staphylococcal nuclease, human carbonic anhydrase, bovine carbonic anhydrase, and human serum albumin. Numerical predictions of protein net charges through these models compare well with the results reported in the literature, including those found asymptotically through protein charge ladder techniques. Model calculations indicate that the hydrodynamic radius is sensitive to changes of the protein net charge and hence it cannot be assumed constant in general. Also, several limitations associated with models for estimating protein net charge and hydrodynamic radius from protein structure, amino acid sequence, and experimental electrophoretic mobility are provided and discussed. These conclusions also show clear requirements for further research.
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PMID:Effect of background electrolyte on the estimation of protein hydrodynamic radius and net charge through capillary zone electrophoresis. 1609 25

The multi-purpose experimental endstation of beamline BL9 at the Dortmund Electron Accelerator (DELTA) is dedicated to diffraction experiments in grazing-incidence geometry, reflectivity and powder diffraction measurements. Moreover, fluorescence analysis and inelastic X-ray scattering experiments can be performed. Recently, a new set-up for small-angle and wide-angle X-ray scattering utilizing detection by means of an image-plate scanner was installed and is described in detail here. First small-angle X-ray scattering experiments on aqueous solutions of lysozyme with different cosolvents and of staphylococcal nuclease are discussed. The application of the set-up for texture analysis is emphasized and a study of the crystallographic texture of natural bio-nanocomposites, using lobster and crab cuticles as model materials, is presented.
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PMID:The small-angle and wide-angle X-ray scattering set-up at beamline BL9 of DELTA. 1743 99

The fast and accurate prediction of protein flexibility is one of the major challenges in protein science. Enzyme activity, signal transduction, and ligand binding are dynamic processes involving essential conformational changes ranging from small side chain fluctuations to reorientations of entire domains. In the present work, we describe a reimplementation of the CONCOORD approach, termed tCONCOORD, which allows a computationally efficient sampling of conformational transitions of a protein based on geometrical considerations. Moreover, it allows for the extraction of the essential degrees of freedom, which, in general, are the biologically relevant ones. The method rests on a reliable estimate of the stability of interactions observed in a starting structure, in particular those interactions that change during a conformational transition. Applications to adenylate kinase, calmodulin, aldose reductase, T4-lysozyme, staphylococcal nuclease, and ubiquitin show that experimentally known conformational transitions are faithfully predicted.
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PMID:Geometry-based sampling of conformational transitions in proteins. 1799 73


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