Differential solubilization of human erythrocyte cell membrane proteins by maleic anhydride.

A method is described to differentially solubilize the proteins of erythrocyte membranes using maleic anhydride. Based on this solubilization, the two groups of proteins appear to be distinct in their molecular organization within the membrane structure. From the operational criteria of peripheral and integral proteins of biological membranes, it is suggested that maleic anhydride by itself solubilizes mostly the peripheral proteins, while, in the presence of urea, it solubilizes almost all the proteins. It is suggested that maleic anhydride could be used to solubilize, fractionate and characterize the membrane proteins. Since maleyl groups can be removed from proteins, reconstitution of membrane structure from solubilized components could be studied.     

Functional annotation from the genome sequence of the giant panda

The giant panda is one of the most critically endangered species due to the fragmentation and loss of its habitat. Studying the functions of proteins in this animal, especially specific trait-related proteins, is therefore necessary to protect the species. In this work, the functions of these proteins were investigated using the genome sequence of the giant panda. Data on 21,001 proteins and their functions were stored in the Giant Panda Protein Database, in which the proteins were divided into two groups: 20,179 proteins whose functions can be predicted by GeneScan formed the known-function group, whereas 822 proteins whose functions cannot be predicted by GeneScan comprised the unknownfunction group. For the known-function group, we further classified the proteins by molecular function, biological process, cellular component, and tissue specificity. For the unknown-function group, we developed a strategy in which the proteins were filtered by cross- Blast to identify panda-specific proteins under the assumption that proteins related to the panda-specific traits in the unknown-function group exist. After this filtering procedure, we identified 32 proteins (2 of which are membrane proteins) specific to the giant panda genome as compared against the dog and horse genomes. Based on their amino acid sequences, these 32 proteins were further analyzed by functional classification using SVM-Prot, motif prediction using MyHits, and interacting protein prediction using the Database of Interacting Proteins. Nineteen proteins were predicted to be zinc-binding proteins, thus affecting the activities of nucleic acids. The 32 panda-specific proteins will be further investigated by structural and functional analysis.     

Proteomic study of a model causative agent of harmful algal blooms, Prorocentrum triestinum II: the use of differentially expressed protein profiles under different growth phases and growth conditions for bloom prediction

Simultaneous comparison of differentially expressed protein profiles of Prorocentrum triestinum grown under different growth phases and growth conditions indicated the presence of phase-specific and stress-responsive proteins, respectively. Correlation studies on these proteins in relation to cell division phasing patterns and to models of phytoplankton growth inferred the possible functions. Most notable among these proteins were groups of proteins thought to trigger or mediate cells through specific phases of division of this alga, e.g., BP1, BP2, PB1, PB2, and PB3. Other proteins (e.g., group 1 proteins) thought to be responsible for maintaining and supporting cell concentration under adverse conditions were found. Furthermore, another group of proteins (group 2 proteins) thought to be stress-responsive were also detected. Taken overall, these differentially expressed proteins provided important information for uncovering various protective and adaptive mechanisms in the dinoflagellate's life cycle. These proteins have the potential to serve as "indicator proteins" for rapid assessment of the nutritional or metabolic status of these phytoplankton cells,and monitoring the differential expression of these phase-specific proteins and stress-specific proteins could be an important biomarker for bloom prediction.     

Prediction of thermophilic proteins using feature selection technique

The thermostability of proteins is particularly relevant for enzyme engineering. Developing a computational method to identify mesophilic proteins would be helpful for protein engineering and design. In this work, we developed support vector machine based method to predict thermophilic proteins using the information of amino acid distribution and selected amino acid pairs. A reliable benchmark dataset including 915 thermophilic proteins and 793 non-thermophilic proteins was constructed for training and testing the proposed models. Results showed that 93.8% thermophilic proteins and 92.7% non-thermophilic proteins could be correctly predicted by using jackknife cross-validation. High predictive successful rate exhibits that this model can be applied for designing stable proteins.     

The contribution of Pir protein family to yeast cell surface display

Proteins with internal repeats (Pir) in the Baker’s yeast are located on the cell wall and include four highly homologous members. Recently, Pir proteins have become increasingly used as anchor proteins in yeast cell surface display systems. These display systems are classified into three types: N-terminal fusion, C-terminal fusion, and inserted fusion. In addition to the GPI (glycosylphosphatidyl inositol) and the FL/FS anchor proteins, these three Pir-based systems significantly increase the choices for target proteins to be displayed. Furthermore, Pir proteins can also be used as a fusion partner for target proteins to be effectively secreted into culture medium. Here, we summarize the development and application of Pir proteins as anchor proteins.     

Introduction of protein kinase recognition sites into proteins: a review of their preparation, advantages, and applications.

Labeled proteins are used in a variety of applications. This review focuses on methods that utilize genetic engineering to introduce protein kinase recognition sites into proteins. Many protein kinase recognition sites can be introduced into proteins and serve as useful tags for a variety of purposes. The introduction of protein kinase recognition sites into proteins can be achieved without modifying the essential structure or function of the proteins. Because proteins modified by these procedures retain their activity after phosphorylation, they can be used in many applications. The phosphorylatable proteins can be labeled easily to high specific activity with radioisotopes ((32)P, (33)P, or (35)S), or the nonradioactive (31)P can be used. The use of these radioisotopes provides a convenient and safe method for radiolabeling proteins. Moreover, the use of the nonradioactive (31)P with protein tyrosine kinase recognition sites permits the tagging of proteins and their detection with the many anti-phosphotyrosine antibodies available. Overall, the procedure represents a convenient, safe, and efficient method to label proteins for a variety of applications.     

Physical Features of Intracellular Proteins that Moonlight on the Cell Surface

Moonlighting proteins comprise a subset of multifunctional proteins that perform two or more biochemical functions that are not due to gene fusions, multiple splice variants, proteolytic fragments, or promiscuous enzyme activities. The project described herein focuses on a sub-set of moonlighting proteins that have a canonical biochemical function inside the cell and perform a second biochemical function on the cell surface in at least one species. The goal of this project is to consider the biophysical features of these moonlighting proteins to determine whether they have shared characteristics or defining features that might suggest why these particular proteins were adopted for a second function on the cell surface, or if these proteins resemble typical intracellular proteins. The latter might suggest that many other normally intracellular proteins found on the cell surface might also be moonlighting in this fashion. We have identified 30 types of proteins that have different functions inside the cell and on the cell surface. Some of these proteins are found to moonlight on the surface of multiple species, sometimes with different extracellular functions in different species, so there are a total of 98 proteins in the study set. Although a variety of intracellular proteins (enzymes, chaperones, etc.) are observed to be re-used on the cell surface, for the most part, these proteins were found to have physical characteristics typical of intracellular proteins. Many other intracellular proteins have also been found on the surface of bacterial pathogens and other organisms in proteomics experiments. It is quite possible that many of those proteins also have a moonlighting function on the cell surface. The increasing number and variety of known moonlighting proteins suggest that there may be more moonlighting proteins than previously thought, and moonlighting might be a common feature of many more proteins.     

Arabidopsis plasma membrane proteomics identifies components of transport, signal transduction and membrane trafficking

In order to identify integral proteins and peripheral proteins associated with the plasma membrane, highly purified Arabidopsis plasma membranes from green tissue (leaves and petioles) were analyzed by mass spectrometry. Plasma membranes were isolated by aqueous two-phase partitioning, which yields plasma membrane vesicles with a cytoplasmic-side-in orientation and with a purity of 95%. These vesicles were turned inside-out by treatment with Brij 58 to remove soluble contaminating proteins enclosed in the vesicles and to remove loosely bound contaminating proteins. In total, 238 putative plasma membrane proteins were identified, of which 114 are predicted to have transmembrane domains or to be glycosyl phosphatidylinositol anchored. About two-thirds of the identified integral proteins have not previously been shown to be plasma membrane proteins. Of the 238 identified proteins, 76% could be classified according to function. Major classes are proteins involved in transport (17%), signal transduction (16%), membrane trafficking (9%) and stress responses (9%). Almost a quarter of the proteins identified in the present study are functionally unclassified and more than half of these are predicted to be integral.     

Predicting mostly disordered proteins by using structure-unknown protein data

Background  

Predicting intrinsically disordered proteins is important in structural biology because they are thought to carry out various cellular functions even though they have no stable three-dimensional structure. We know the structures of far more ordered proteins than disordered proteins. The structural distribution of proteins in nature can therefore be inferred to differ from that of proteins whose structures have been determined experimentally. We know many more protein sequences than we do protein structures, and many of the known sequences can be expected to be those of disordered proteins. Thus it would be efficient to use the information of structure-unknown proteins in order to avoid training data sparseness. We propose a novel method for predicting which proteins are mostly disordered by using spectral graph transducer and training with a huge amount of structure-unknown sequences as well as structure-known sequences.     

Intrinsically disordered regions have specific functions in mitochondrial and nuclear proteins

Proteins in general consist not only of globular structural domains (SDs), but also of intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), i.e. those that do not assume unique three-dimensional structures by themselves. Although IDRs are especially prevalent in eukaryotic proteins, the functions are mostly unknown. To elucidate the functions of IDRs, we first divided eukaryotic proteins into subcellular localizations, identified IDRs by the DICHOT system that accurately divides entire proteins into SDs and IDRs, and examined charge and hydropathy characteristics. On average, mitochondrial proteins have IDRs more positively charged than SDs. Comparison of mitochondrial proteins with orthologous prokaryotic proteins showed that mitochondrial proteins tend to have segments attached at both N and C termini, high fractions of which are IDRs. Segments added to the N-terminus of mitochondrial proteins contain not only signal sequences but also mature proteins and exhibit a positive charge gradient, with the magnitude increasing toward the N-terminus. This finding is consistent with the notion that positively charged residues are added to the N-terminus of proteobacterial proteins so that the extended proteins can be chromosomally encoded and efficiently transported to mitochondria after translation. By contrast, nuclear proteins generally have positively charged SDs and negatively charged IDRs. Among nuclear proteins, DNA-binding proteins have enhanced charge tendencies. We propose that SDs in nuclear proteins tend to be positively charged because of the need to bind to negatively charged nucleotides, while IDRs tend to be negatively charged to interact with other proteins or other regions of the same proteins to avoid premature proteasomal degradation.     

2-DE技术中疏水性和碱性蛋白质的研究进展

双向凝胶电泳(2-DE)具有高分辨率、高通量等特点,已被广泛地用于蛋白质组的分离．但是它在分离疏水性蛋白质和碱性蛋白质时却遇到了极大的挑战．然而,疏水性与碱性蛋白质在全蛋白质中占相当大的比例,且具有很重要的生物学意义．因而,近年来,越来越多的研究者将目标瞄准这些蛋白质,并且取得了一些令人鼓舞的进展：用亚细胞预分离技术,顺序提取法等方法来富集疏水性蛋白质,用一些新的有效的增溶剂如硫脲,ASB一14等来改善疏水性蛋白质的溶解,应用这些技术2一DE可分辨出总平均疏水值达O．80的蛋白质;在碱性蛋白质分离方面,通过等电聚焦预处理,使用窄pH梯度胶条等大大地改善了碱性蛋白质在2-DE中的分离,能分辨出等电点达11．7的蛋白质．现对2-DE技术中疏水性和碱性蛋白质分离的研究进展进行综述．     

Transfer of silver-stained proteins from polyacrylamide gels to polyvinylidene difluoride membranes.

We have developed a method to transfer proteins from a silver-stained polyacrylamide gel to a polyvinylidene difluoride (Immobilon-P) transfer membrane (Millipore, Bedford, MA). If the silver stained gels are rinsed in 2 x SDS Laemmli sample buffer prior to transfer, almost all proteins can be transferred comparably to non-stained controls. Some proteins stained with silver can be directly transfer, almost all proteins can be transferred comparably to non-stained controls. Some proteins stained with silver can be directly transferred to a single sheet of Immobilon-P without a prior rinse in sample buffer. Most important in the Western blot the antigenicity of the transferred protein is retained in either way. The method described is simple, inexpensive and versatile. A slight modification of the technique permits one to extract minor proteins, or detect their antigenic activities, without contamination of contiguous proteins.     

Electric charge balance mechanism of extended soluble proteins

Extended proteins such as calmodulin and troponin C have two globular terminal domains linked by a central region that is exposed to water and often acts as a function-regulating element. The mechanisms that stabilize the tertiary structure of extended proteins appear to differ greatly from those of globular proteins. Identifying such differences in physical properties of amino acid sequences between extended proteins and globular proteins can provide clues useful for identification of extended proteins from complete genomes including orphan sequences. In the present study, we examined the structure and amino acid sequence of extended proteins. We found that extended proteins have a large net electric charge, high charge density, and an even balance of charge between the terminal domains, indicating that electrostatic interaction is a dominant factor in stabilization of extended proteins. Additionally, the central domain exposed to water contained many amphiphilic residues. Extended proteins can be identified from these physical properties of the tertiary structure, which can be deduced from the amino acid sequence. Analysis of physical properties of amino acid sequences can provide clues to the mechanism of protein folding. Also, structural changes in extended proteins may be caused by formation of molecular complexes. Long-range effects of electrostatic interactions also appear to play important roles in structural changes of extended proteins.     

Changes related to the oestrous cycle in the expression of endometrial and oviductal proteins of mice.

Soluble proteins extracted from the endometria and oviducts of normal sexually mature cycling Swiss Webster mice were analysed by two-dimensional high-resolution sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). Thirty endometrial and 25 oviductal proteins showed differential expression related to the oestrous cycle. In the endometrium, 19 proteins were maximally expressed in the oestrous phase, and significantly decreased or could not be detected in dioestrus. Eleven additional proteins were more prominent in dioestrus. Most of these endometrial cyclic proteins were acidic. In the oviduct, almost two-thirds of cycle-related, differentially expressed proteins were more strongly expressed in dioestrus and were significantly less prominent or could not be detected in the oestrous phase. In contrast to the endometrial proteins, most of the oviductal cyclic proteins were basic. Fourteen proteins appeared to be identical in both organs, and five of these showed the same cyclic pattern of expression. The remaining cyclic proteins were organ specific and showed uterus- or oviduct-specific changes during the oestrous cycle. Among the cyclic proteins, four endometrial and two oviductal proteins were restricted to oestrus, whereas two endometrial and seven oviductal proteins were restricted to dioestrus. These proteins could serve as markers for specific phases of the oestrous cycle. Our data show that the mouse oestrous cycle is associated with consistent and predictable changes in protein expression in both the endometrium and oviduct.     

Protein bipartivity and essentiality in the yeast protein-protein interaction network

Protein-protein interaction networks (PINs) are structured by means of a few highly connected proteins linked to a large number of less-connected ones. Essential proteins have been found to be more abundant among these highly connected proteins. Here we demonstrate that the likelihood that removal of a protein in a PIN will prove lethal to yeast correlates with the lack of bipartivity of the protein. A protein is bipartite if it can be partitioned in such a way that there are two groups of proteins with intergroup, but not intragroup, interactions. The abundance of essential proteins found among the least bipartite proteins clearly exceeds that found among the most connected ones. For instance, among the top 50 proteins ranked by their lack of bipartivity 62% are essential proteins. However, this percentage is only 38% for proteins ranked according to their number of interactions. Protein bipartivity also surpasses another 5 measures of protein centrality in yeast PIN in identifying essential proteins and doubles the number of essential proteins selected at random. We propose a possible mechanism for the evolution of essential proteins in yeast PIN based on the duplication-divergence scheme. We conclude that a replica protein evolving from a nonbipartite target will also be nonbipartite with high probability. Consequently, these new replicas evolving from nonbipartite (essential) targets will with high probability be essential.     

Computation of non-covalent interactions in TNF proteins and interleukins

The roles played by the non-covalent interactions have been investigated for a set of six TNF proteins and nine Interleukins. The stabilizing residues have been identified by a consensus approach using the concepts of available surface area, medium and long-range interactions and conservation of amino acid residues. The cation-pi interactions have been computed based on a geometric approach such as distance and energy criteria. We identified an average of 1 energetically significant cation-pi interactions in every 94 residues in TNF proteins and 1 in every 62 residues in Interleukins. In TNF proteins, the cationic groups Lys preferred to be in helix while Arg preferred to be in strand regions while in Interleukins the Arg residues preferred to be in helix and Lys preferred to be in strand regions. From the available surface area calculations, we found that, almost all the cation and pi residues in TNF proteins and Interleukins were either in buried or partially buried regions and none of them in the exposed regions. Medium and long-range interactions were predominant in both TNF proteins and Interleukins. It was observed that the percentage of stabilizing centers were more in TNF proteins as compared to the Interleukins, while the percentage of conserved residues were more in Interleukins than in TNF proteins. In the stabilizing residues Lys was observed to be a stabilizing residue in both TNF proteins and Interleukins. Among the aromatic group, Phe was seen to be a stabilizing residue in both TNF and Interleukins. We suggest that this study on the computation of cation-pi interactions in TNF proteins and Interleukins would be very helpful in further understanding the structure, stability and functional similarity of these proteins.     

Computational Prediction of Human Salivary Proteins from Blood Circulation and Application to Diagnostic Biomarker Identification

Proteins can move from blood circulation into salivary glands through active transportation, passive diffusion or ultrafiltration, some of which are then released into saliva and hence can potentially serve as biomarkers for diseases if accurately identified. We present a novel computational method for predicting salivary proteins that come from circulation. The basis for the prediction is a set of physiochemical and sequence features we found to be discerning between human proteins known to be movable from circulation to saliva and proteins deemed to be not in saliva. A classifier was trained based on these features using a support-vector machine to predict protein secretion into saliva. The classifier achieved 88.56% average recall and 90.76% average precision in 10-fold cross-validation on the training data, indicating that the selected features are informative. Considering the possibility that our negative training data may not be highly reliable (i.e., proteins predicted to be not in saliva), we have also trained a ranking method, aiming to rank the known salivary proteins from circulation as the highest among the proteins in the general background, based on the same features. This prediction capability can be used to predict potential biomarker proteins for specific human diseases when coupled with the information of differentially expressed proteins in diseased versus healthy control tissues and a prediction capability for blood-secretory proteins. Using such integrated information, we predicted 31 candidate biomarker proteins in saliva for breast cancer.     

Crystallizing membrane proteins using lipidic bicelles

Crystallization of membrane proteins remains a significant challenge. For proteins resistant to the traditional approach of directly crystallizing from detergents, lipidic phase crystallization can be a powerful tool. Bicelles are an excellent medium for crystallizing membrane proteins in a lipidic environment. They can be described as bilayer discs formed by the mixture of a long-chain phospholipid and an amphiphile in an aqueous medium. Membrane proteins can be readily reconstituted into bicelles, where they are maintained in a native-like bilayer environment. Importantly, membrane proteins have been shown to be fully functional in bicelles under physiological conditions. Protein-bicelle mixtures can be manipulated with almost the same ease as detergent-solubilized membrane proteins, making bicelles compatible with standard equipment including high-throughput crystallization robots. A number of membrane proteins have now been successfully crystallized using the bicelle method, including bacteriorhodopsin, β2 adrenergic receptor, voltage-dependent anion channel, xanthorhodopsin and rhomboid protease. Because of the success with a variety of membrane proteins and the ease of implementation, bicelles should be a part of every membrane protein crystallographer's arsenal.     

A proteomics approach for the analysis of hemolymph proteins involved in the immediate defense response of the soft tick, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ornithodoros savignyi</Emphasis>, when challenged with <Emphasis Type="Italic">Candida albicans</Emphasis>

A proteomics approach was employed to identify proteins secreted into the hemolymph of Ornithodorus savignyi ticks 2 h after immune-challenge with the yeast, Candida albicans. Profiling of the proteins present in hemolymph of unchallenged ticks versus ticks challenged with heat-killed yeast revealed five proteins to be differentially expressed. The modulated protein spots were subjected to tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) analysis, but could not be positively identified. These proteins can be assigned to the immune response as they were not induced after aseptic injury. In an attempt to identify hemolymph proteins that recognize and bind to yeast cells, hemolymph obtained from both unchallenged and challenged ticks was incubated with C. albicans. Elution of the bound proteins followed by SDS–PAGE analysis indicated that three proteins (97, 88 and 26 kDa) present in both unchallenged and challenged hemolymph samples bind to yeast cells. The constant presence of these three proteins in tick hemolymph leads us to believe that they may be involved in non-self recognition and participate in yeast clearance from tick plasma. The analyzed yeast-binding proteins could also not be positively identified, suggesting that all the tick immune proteins investigated in this study are novel.     

Polypeptide-binding proteins mediate completion of co-translational protein translocation into the mammalian endoplasmic reticulum

The first step in the secretion of most mammalian proteins is their transport into the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Transport of pre-secretory proteins into the mammalian ER requires signal peptides in the precursor proteins and a protein translocase in the ER membrane. In addition, hitherto unidentified lumenal ER proteins have been shown to be required for vectorial protein translocation. This requirement was confirmed in this study by using proteoliposomes that were made from microsomal detergent extracts and contained either low or high concentrations of lumenal ER proteins. Furthermore, immunoglobulin-heavy-chain-binding protein (BiP) was shown to be able to substitute for the full set of lumenal proteins and, in the case of biotinylated precursor proteins, avidin was found to be able to substitute for lumenal proteins. Thus, the polypeptide-chain-binding protein BiP was identified as one lumenal protein that is involved in efficient vectorial protein translocation into the mammalian ER.