蛋白质大分子的结晶

近几年研究蛋白质晶体的生长机理及过程日益受到重视 ,并逐步发展为蛋白质晶体学中的另一个重要的科学分支。1 .蛋白质结晶的基本过程蛋白质属于生物大分子 ,但其结晶的一般过程与盐、有机小分子等的结晶过程一样可分为 3个阶段进行 :( 1 )形成稳定的晶核 ;( 2 )由晶核生长为晶体 ;( 3)生长结束。1 .1　成核　　是指溶解在溶液中的分子或非晶态的低聚体 (二聚体 ,三聚体等 )以过饱和度为驱动力聚合在一起形成热力学稳态的点阵结构。Ｄｒｅｎｔｈ等[1] 研究发现 ,在蛋白质结晶后其溶液体系的自由能降低了 1 2～ 2 4ｋＪ/ｍｏｌ。另外 ,结晶蛋…     

电场中的蛋白质结晶

人们一直致力于寻求提高蛋白质晶体质量的方法,利用电场诱导蛋白质结晶即是诸多方法中的一种。已有文献报道显示,电场对蛋白质结晶的影响是积极的。我们从直流电场、交流电场、内置电场、外置电场对蛋白质结晶的影响及相关结晶设备,电场中生长的蛋白质晶体质量的评估,电场中蛋白质结晶的原理及影响因素等方面,对已报道的电场中的蛋白质结晶研究工作进行了总结。     

不依赖天然外显子的蛋白质内含子定向进化筛选系统

蛋白质剪接技术为在蛋白质水平上直接对蛋白质进行修饰和加工提供了一种全新的解决方案,因而在蛋白质工程及相关领域具有非常广阔的应用前景。现阶段,大部分天然的蛋白质内含子在异源蛋白质中剪接活性非常低,极大限制了蛋白质内含子的开发和应用。为了开发一个可以同时对蛋白质内含子通用性和剪接活性进行筛选的系统,利用Bsa I限制性内切酶识别位点和切割不重合的特性,将Ter ThyX内含子(不含外显子序列)插入到卡那霉素抗性蛋白基因的多个位点。并且摒弃了以往需要结合天然外显子以实现剪接的方法,可以同时对蛋白质内含子的剪接活性和通用性进行筛选。Western blot结果和卡那霉素平板生长结果表明,通过卡那霉素筛选系统可以精确的将蛋白质内含子剪接反应与卡那霉素抗性结合起来,仅从卡那霉素平板上的菌落生长情况即可完成蛋白质内含子剪接活性阳性突变的筛选,是一个快速,稳定的定向进化筛选系统。     

蛋白质结晶的研究进展

概括了蛋白质结晶的基本过程,阐述了蛋白质结晶的早期发展历程,重点介绍了蛋白质结晶的近期研究状况,主要包括:形核机理的研究、结晶条件的筛选和结晶技术的优化以及基于结构的药物设计技术。特别是对离子液体在蛋白质结晶过程中的应用及发展前景进行了讨论。     

制备用于结晶的蛋白质样品

制备高质量蛋白质晶体是通过X射线衍射解析蛋白质分子三维结构的关键环节,是结构生物学领域中的瓶颈问题之一。蛋白质的结晶受多因素控制,其中蛋白质样品自身的质量是影响蛋白质能否结晶及晶体质量好坏的关键因素。我们从蛋白质纯度、可溶性、均一性及表面修饰等方面介绍了如何获得适于结晶的蛋白质样品,以及如何借助相关仪器检测蛋白质样品的质量,预测蛋白质的可结晶性。     

筛选差异表达基因和蛋白质的方法进展

分离和鉴定差异表达基因和蛋白质不仅有助于发现基因和蛋白质的功能,更有助于揭示某些疾病的发生机理.目前筛选差异表达基因的方法主要有差异显示PCR方法(differential display RT-PCR,DDRT-PCR)、消减杂交法(subtractive hybridization,SH)、基因芯片技术(DNA chip technique)和基因表达的系统分析(serial analysis of gene expression,SAGE)等,其中消减杂交法中又先后建立了代表性差异分析技术(representational difference analysis,RDA)、抑制消减杂交法(suppression subtractive hybridization,SSH)和获得全长基因的消减杂交法(full-length-gene-obtainable subtractive hybridization).筛选差异表达蛋白质的方法主要有双向电泳技术(two-dimentional gel electrophoresis)和噬菌体全套抗体库技术(phage display antibody repertoire library technique).这些方法各有特点,各有利弊,研究者可根据自己的需要选择适合于自己的方法.     

温度影响蛋白质结晶的研究现状

温度控制作为调控蛋白质结晶过程的手段,在结晶实验中被广泛采用。热历史效应作为蛋白质结晶实验中新的影响因素,已被越来越多的科学家所重视。控制温度可以改变蛋白质的溶解度,进一步改变溶液的过饱和度,从而影响结晶过程。我们简要总结了温度对蛋白质结晶的影响及应用温度技术控制蛋白质晶体生长的各种技术,为蛋白质结晶工作提供理论和实验依据。     

分子生物学在蛋白质结晶中的应用

获得具有高分辨率的蛋白质晶体是目前蛋白质结构测定的主要瓶颈 . 蛋白质结晶受很多因素影响,蛋白质自身是结晶时最重要的变量,可以说,蛋白质的内在特性在某种程度上决定了其能否结晶以及所得晶体分辨率的高低 . 近年来分子生物学尤其是蛋白质工程的应用有效地提高蛋白质的溶解度、均一性及可结晶性等内在特性,促进蛋白质的结晶,成为提高蛋白质结晶能力和蛋白质晶体分辨率的有效途径 .     

蛋白质结晶委托服务汇集不同领域的知识开发革新的结晶技术

在电工学领域研究结晶技术的大阪大学的研究者们向蛋白质发起挑战。他们与结构生物学的研究者们合作,创造出革新的结晶技术。2005年7月份,他们建立风险企业,开始提供结晶委托服务。[编者按]     

蛋白质的晶体生长及其进展

蛋白质晶体生长是用衍射法测定和研究蛋白质三维结构不可缺少的首要步骤,因而对于从分子水平了解生命过程和有效地开发蛋白质工程、理性药物设计等新的生物技术具有重要意义。这一结构测定步骤所处的落后状态,更使蛋白质晶体生长成为倍受重视的研究课题。蛋白质和核酸等生物大分子的结晶是一个受多个因素影响的过程。来自不同学科的研究人员从各个方面对蛋白质的晶体生长开展了研究,并取得了不同程度的进展。     

Selection of membrane protein targets for crystallization using PFO-PAGE electrophoresis

A method to rapidly assess the oligomeric composition of multimeric proteins is notably absent from reported schemes for high throughput production and crystallization of membrane proteins. In this report we have investigated the suitability of PFO-PAGE electrophoresis for this purpose and present examples where it proves highly informative in selecting conditions favouring the functional oligomeric state of the target protein. Features such as the ability to analyze several samples in parallel, including crude membrane extracts, suggest it will be highly adaptable to high throughput analysis of membrane proteins.     

Insights into outer membrane protein crystallization

Outer membrane proteins are structurally distinct from those that reside in the inner membrane and play important roles in bacterial pathogenicity and human metabolism. X-ray crystallography studies on >40 different outer membrane proteins have revealed that the transmembrane portion of these proteins can be constructed from either β-sheets or less commonly from α-helices. The most common architecture is the β-barrel, which can be formed from either a single anti-parallel sheet, fused at both ends to form a barrel or from multiple peptide chains. Outer membrane proteins exhibit considerable rigidity and stability, making their study through x-ray crystallography particularly tractable. As the number of structures of outer membrane proteins increases a more rational approach to their crystallization can be made. Herein we analyse the crystallization data from 53 outer membrane proteins and compare the results to those obtained for inner membrane proteins. A targeted sparse matrix screen for outer membrane protein crystallization is presented based on the present analysis.     

Identifying protein construct variants with increased crystallization propensity--a case study

This study describes an efficient multiparallel automated workflow of cloning, expression, purification, and crystallization of a large set of construct variants for isolated protein domains aimed at structure determination by X-ray crystallography. This methodology is applied to MAPKAP kinase 2, a key enzyme in the inflammation pathway and thus an attractive drug target. The study reveals a distinct subset of truncation variants with improved crystallization properties. These constructs distinguish themselves by increased solubility and stability during a parallel automated multistep purification process including removal of the recombinant tag. High-throughput protein melting point analysis characterizes this subset of constructs as particularly thermostable. Both parallel purification screening and melting point determination clearly identify residue 364 as the optimal C terminus for the kinase domain. Moreover, all three constructs that ultimately crystallized feature this C terminus. At the N terminus, only three amino acids differentiate a noncrystallizing from a crystallizing construct. This study addresses the very common issues associated with difficult to crystallize proteins, those of solubility and stability, and the crucial importance of particular residues in the formation of crystal contacts. A methodology is suggested that includes biophysical measurements to efficiently identify and produce construct variants of isolated protein domains which exhibit higher crystallization propensity.     

Patterns of protein protein interactions in salt solutions and implications for protein crystallization

The second osmotic virial coefficients of seven proteins-ovalbumin, ribonuclease A, bovine serum albumin, alpha-lactalbumin, myoglobin, cytochrome c, and catalase-were measured in salt solutions. Comparison of the interaction trends in terms of the dimensionless second virial coefficient b(2) shows that, at low salt concentrations, protein-protein interactions can be either attractive or repulsive, possibly due to the anisotropy of the protein charge distribution. At high salt concentrations, the behavior depends on the salt: In sodium chloride, protein interactions generally show little salt dependence up to very high salt concentrations, whereas in ammonium sulfate, proteins show a sharp drop in b(2) with increasing salt concentration beyond a particular threshold. The experimental phase behavior of the proteins corroborates these observations in that precipitation always follows the drop in b(2). When the proteins crystallize, they do so at slightly lower salt concentrations than seen for precipitation. The b(2) measurements were extended to other salts for ovalbumin and catalase. The trends follow the Hofmeister series, and the effect of the salt can be interpreted as a water-mediated effect between the protein and salt molecules. The b(2) trends quantify protein-protein interactions and provide some understanding of the corresponding phase behavior. The results explain both why ammonium sulfate is among the best crystallization agents, as well as some of the difficulties that can be encountered in protein crystallization.     

Protein flexibility in ligand docking and virtual screening to protein kinases

The main complicating factor in structure-based drug design is receptor rearrangement upon ligand binding (induced fit). It is the induced fit that complicates cross-docking of ligands from different ligand-receptor complexes. Previous studies have shown the necessity to include protein flexibility in ligand docking and virtual screening. Very few docking methods have been developed to predict the induced fit reliably and, at the same time, to improve on discriminating between binders and non-binders in the virtual screening process.We present an algorithm called the ICM-flexible receptor docking algorithm (IFREDA) to account for protein flexibility in virtual screening. By docking flexible ligands to a flexible receptor, IFREDA generates a discrete set of receptor conformations, which are then used to perform flexible ligand-rigid receptor docking and scoring. This is followed by a merging and shrinking step, where the results of the multiple virtual screenings are condensed to improve the enrichment factor. In the IFREDA approach, both side-chain rearrangements and essential backbone movements are taken into consideration, thus sampling adequately the conformational space of the receptor, even in cases of large loop movements.As a preliminary step, to show the importance of incorporating protein flexibility in ligand docking and virtual screening, and to validate the merging and shrinking procedure, we compiled an extensive small-scale virtual screening benchmark of 33 crystal structures of four different protein kinases sub-families (cAPK, CDK-2, P38 and LCK), where we obtained an enrichment factor fold-increase of 1.85±0.65 using two or three multiple experimental conformations. IFREDA was used in eight protein kinase complexes and was able to find the correct ligand conformation and discriminate the correct conformations from the “misdocked” conformations solely on the basis of energy calculation. Five of the generated structures were used in the small-scale virtual screening stage and, by merging and shrinking the results with those of the original structure, we show an enrichment factor fold increase of 1.89±0.60, comparable to that obtained using multiple experimental conformations.Our cross-docking tests on the protein kinase benchmark underscore the necessity of incorporating protein flexibility in both ligand docking and virtual screening. The methodology presented here will be extremely useful in cases where few or no experimental structures of complexes are available, while some binders are known.     

Influence of precipitating agents on thermodynamic parameters of protein crystallization solutions

X‐ray crystallography is the most powerful method for determining three‐dimensional structures of proteins to (near‐)atomic resolution, but protein crystallization is a poorly explained and often intractable phenomenon. Differential Scanning Calorimetry was used to measure the thermodynamic parameters (ΔG, ΔH, ΔS) of temperature‐driven unfolding of two globular proteins, lysozyme, and ribonuclease A, in various salt solutions. The mixtures were categorized into those that were conducive to crystallization of the protein and those that were not. It was found that even fairly low salt concentrations had very large effects on thermodynamic parameters. High concentrations of salts conducive to crystallization stabilized the native folded forms of proteins, whereas high concentrations of salts that did not crystallize them tended to destabilize them. Considering the ΔH and TΔS contributions to the ΔG of unfolding separately, high concentrations of crystallizing salts were found to enthalpically stabilize and entropically destabilize the protein, and vice‐versa for the noncrystallizing salts. These observations suggest an explanation, in terms of protein stability and entropy of hydration, of why some salts are good crystallization agents for a given protein and others are not. This in turn provides theoretical insight into the process of protein crystallization, suggesting ways of predicting and controlling it. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 105: 642–652, 2016.     

Exploring the effects of sparse restraints on protein structure prediction

One of the main barriers to accurate computational protein structure prediction is searching the vast space of protein conformations. Distance restraints or inter‐residue contacts have been used to reduce this search space, easing the discovery of the correct folded state. It has been suggested that about 1 contact for every 12 residues may be sufficient to predict structure at fold level accuracy. Here, we use coarse‐grained structure‐based models in conjunction with molecular dynamics simulations to examine this empirical prediction. We generate sparse contact maps for 15 proteins of varying sequence lengths and topologies and find that given perfect secondary‐structural information, a small fraction of the native contact map (5%‐10%) suffices to fold proteins to their correct native states. We also find that different sparse maps are not equivalent and we make several observations about the type of maps that are successful at such structure prediction. Long range contacts are found to encode more information than shorter range ones, especially for α and αβ‐proteins. However, this distinction reduces for β‐proteins. Choosing contacts that are a consensus from successful maps gives predictive sparse maps as does choosing contacts that are well spread out over the protein structure. Additionally, the folding of proteins can also be used to choose predictive sparse maps. Overall, we conclude that structure‐based models can be used to understand the efficacy of structure‐prediction restraints and could, in future, be tuned to include specific force‐field interactions, secondary structure errors and noise in the sparse maps.     

SPR蛋白质芯片在输入性疟疾筛查中的应用

输入性疟疾已是我国疟疾防控的主要危险因素,如何对入境人员进行疟疾快速筛查是急需解决的难题。蛋白质芯片已被广泛应用于高通量筛选和诊断,本研究尝试构建了表面等离子共振技术 (Surface plasmon resonance,SPR) 蛋白芯片用于恶性疟疾的快速检测。采用聚乙二醇高分子处理的特异性吸附表面,以恶性疟疾特异性抗原富组氨酸蛋白Ⅱ (Histidine-rich protein Ⅱ,HRP2) 作为捕获探针,建立疟疾的微阵列芯片,并对芯片的最佳抗原固定浓度,检测的灵敏性和特异性,以及抗干扰能力进行了分析。该芯片可成功应用于恶性疟疾的筛查,具有无标记、即时快速的特点,与荧光定量PCR法相比,两种方法在敏感度和特异性方面无统计学差异。研究结果为一步研制疟疾分型鉴定蛋白质芯片奠定了基础,有利于对入境人员进行疟疾快速筛查。     

Systematic evaluation of CS‐Rosetta for membrane protein structure prediction with sparse NOE restraints

We critically test and validate the CS‐Rosetta methodology for de novo structure prediction of ‐helical membrane proteins (MPs) from NMR data, such as chemical shifts and NOE distance restraints. By systematically reducing the number and types of NOE restraints, we focus on determining the regime in which MP structures can be reliably predicted and pinpoint the boundaries of the approach. Five MPs of known structure were used as test systems, phototaxis sensory rhodopsin II (pSRII), a subdomain of pSRII, disulfide binding protein B (DsbB), microsomal prostaglandin E2 synthase‐1 (mPGES‐1), and translocator protein (TSPO). For pSRII and DsbB, where NMR and X‐ray structures are available, resolution‐adapted structural recombination (RASREC) CS‐Rosetta yields structures that are as close to the X‐ray structure as the published NMR structures if all available NMR data are used to guide structure prediction. For mPGES‐1 and Bacillus cereus TSPO, where only X‐ray crystal structures are available, highly accurate structures are obtained using simulated NMR data. One main advantage of RASREC CS‐Rosetta is its robustness with respect to even a drastic reduction of the number of NOEs. Close‐to‐native structures were obtained with one randomly picked long‐range NOEs for every 14, 31, 38, and 8 residues for full‐length pSRII, the pSRII subdomain, TSPO, and DsbB, respectively, in addition to using chemical shifts. For mPGES‐1, atomically accurate structures could be predicted even from chemical shifts alone. Our results show that atomic level accuracy for helical membrane proteins is achievable with CS‐Rosetta using very sparse NOE restraint sets to guide structure prediction. Proteins 2017; 85:812–826. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Identification of interacting proteins for calcium-dependent protein kinase 8 by a novel screening system based on bimolecular fluorescence complementation

Protein kinases are key regulators of cell function that constitute one of the largest and most functionally diverse gene families. We developed a novel assay system, based on the bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) technique in Escherichia coli, for detecting transient interactions such as those between kinases and their substrates. This system detected the interaction between OsMEK1 and its direct target OsMAP1. By contrast, BiFC fluorescence was not observed when OsMAP2 or OsMAP3, which are not substrates of OsMEK1, were used as prey proteins. We also screened for interacting proteins of calcium-dependent protein kinase 8 (OsCPK8), a regulator of plant immune responses, and identified three proteins as interacting molecules of OsCPK8. The interaction between OsCPK8 and two of these proteins (ARF-GEF and peptidyl prolyl isomerase) was confirmed in rice cells by means of BiFC technology. These results indicate that our new assay system has the potential to screen for protein kinase target molecules.