Subunit interfaces of oligomeric hyperthermophilic enzymes display enhanced compactness

Enzymes from thermophilic and, particularly, from hyperthermophilic organisms are surprisingly stable. Understanding the molecular origin of protein thermostability and thermoactivity attracted the interest of many scientists both for the perspective comprehension of the principles of protein structure and for the possible biotechnological applications through protein engineering. Comparative studies at sequence and structure levels were aimed at detecting significant differences of structural parameters related to protein stability between thermophilic and hyperthermophilic proteins and their mesophilic homologs. In a recent work, we focused attention on structural adaptation occurring at the subunit interface of oligomeric hyper- and thermostable enzymes. A set of structural and chemico-physical parameters were compared to those observed at the corresponding interfaces of homologous mesophilic proteins. Among the most significant variations, a general increase of interface apolarity and packing density in hyperthermophilic enzymes were found. This work was therefore aimed at elucidating whether the increased packing observed is reached also through the reduction of interface cavity number and volume. The results indicate that number of cavities tends to be relatively constant while cavity volume tends to decrease in the hyperthermophilic interfaces. The cavity apolarity increases in thermophiles but, apparently, not in hyperthermophiles. Moreover, interface hot spot residues of the mesophilic interfaces tend to be conserved in the extremophilic counterparts.