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Identification of a hidden strain switch provides clues to an ancient structural mechanism in protein kinases.

ABSTRACT: The protein kinase catalytic domain contains several conserved residues of unknown functions. Here, using a combination of computational and experimental approaches, we show that the function of some of these residues is to maintain the backbone geometry of the active site in a strained conformation. Specifically, we find that the backbone geometry of the catalytically important HRD motif deviates from ideality in high-resolution structures and the strained geometry results in favorable hydrogen bonds with conserved noncatalytic residues in the active site. In particular, a conserved aspartate in the F-helix hydrogen bonds to the strained HRD backbone in diverse eukaryotic and eukaryotic-like protein kinase crystal structures. Mutations that alter this hydrogen-bonding interaction impair catalytic activity in Aurora kinase. Although the backbone strain is present in most active conformations, several inactive conformations lack the strain because of a peptide flip in the HRD backbone. The peptide flip is correlated with loss of hydrogen bonds with the F-helix aspartate as well as with other interactions associated with kinase regulation. Within protein kinases that are regulated by activation loop phosphorylation, the strained residue is an arginine, which coordinates with the activation loop phosphate. Based on analysis of strain across the protein kinase superfamily, we propose a model in which backbone strain co-evolved with conserved residues for allosteric control of catalytic activity. Our studies provide new clues for the design of allosteric protein kinase inhibitors.

SUBMITTER: Oruganty K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3549070 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Identification of a hidden strain switch provides clues to an ancient structural mechanism in protein kinases.

Oruganty Krishnadev K Talathi Nakul Suhas NS Wood Zachary A ZA Kannan Natarajan N

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20121231 3

The protein kinase catalytic domain contains several conserved residues of unknown functions. Here, using a combination of computational and experimental approaches, we show that the function of some of these residues is to maintain the backbone geometry of the active site in a strained conformation. Specifically, we find that the backbone geometry of the catalytically important HRD motif deviates from ideality in high-resolution structures and the strained geometry results in favorable hydrogen ...[more]

PMID: 23277537

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Project description:BackgroundRNA regulatory elements play a significant role in gene regulation. Riboswitches, a widespread group of regulatory RNAs, are vital components of many bacterial genomes. These regulatory elements generally function by forming a ligand-induced alternative fold that controls access to ribosome binding sites or other regulatory sites in RNA. Riboswitch-mediated mechanisms are ubiquitous across bacterial genomes. A typical class of riboswitch has its own unique structural and biological complexity, making de novo riboswitch identification a formidable task. Traditionally, riboswitches have been identified through comparative genomics based on sequence and structural homology. The limitations of structural-homology-based approaches, coupled with the assumption that there is a great diversity of undiscovered riboswitches, suggests the need for alternative methods for riboswitch identification, possibly based on features intrinsic to their structure. As of yet, no such reliable method has been proposed.ResultsWe used structural entropy of riboswitch sequences as a measure of their secondary structural dynamics. Entropy values of a diverse set of riboswitches were compared to that of their mutants, their dinucleotide shuffles, and their reverse complement sequences under different stochastic context-free grammar folding models. Significance of our results was evaluated by comparison to other approaches, such as the base-pairing entropy and energy landscapes dynamics. Classifiers based on structural entropy optimized via sequence and structural features were devised as riboswitch identifiers and tested on Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, and Synechococcus elongatus as an exploration of structural entropy based approaches. The unusually long untranslated region of the cotH in Bacillus subtilis, as well as upstream regions of certain genes, such as the sucC genes were associated with significant structural entropy values in genome-wide examinations.ConclusionsVarious tests show that there is in fact a relationship between higher structural entropy and the potential for the RNA sequence to have alternative structures, within the limitations of our methodology. This relationship, though modest, is consistent across various tests. Understanding the behavior of structural entropy as a fairly new feature for RNA conformational dynamics, however, may require extensive exploratory investigation both across RNA sequences and folding models.

Project description:Phosphorylation-triggered degradation is a common strategy for elimination of regulatory proteins in many important cell signaling processes. Interesting examples include cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors such as p27 in human and Sic1 in yeast, which play crucial roles during the G1/S transition in the cell cycle. In this work, we have modeled and analyzed the dynamics of multisite-phosphorylation-triggered protein degradation systematically. Inspired by experimental observations on the Sic1 protein and a previous intriguing theoretical conjecture, we develop a model to examine in detail the degradation dynamics of a protein featuring multiple phosphorylation sites and a threshold site number for elimination in response to a kinase signal. Our model explains the role of multiple phosphorylation sites, compared to a single site, in the regulation of protein degradation. A single-site protein cannot convert a graded input of kinase increase to much sharper output, whereas multisite phosphorylation is capable of generating a highly switch-like temporal profile of the substrate protein with two characteristics: a temporal threshold and rapid decrease beyond the threshold. We introduce a measure termed temporal response coefficient to quantify the extent to which a response in the time domain is switch-like and further investigate how this property is determined by various factors including the kinase input, the total number of sites, the threshold site number for elimination, the order of phosphorylation, the kinetic parameters, and site preference. Some interesting and experimentally verifiable predictions include that the non-degradable fraction of the substrate protein exhibits a more switch-like temporal profile; a sequential system is more switch-like, while a random system has the advantage of increased robustness; all the parameters, including the total number of sites, the threshold site number for elimination and the kinetic parameters synergistically determine the exact extent to which the degradation profile is switch-like. Our results suggest design principles for protein degradation switches which might be a widespread mechanism for precise regulation of cellular processes such as cell cycle progression.

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Identification of a hidden strain switch provides clues to an ancient structural mechanism in protein kinases.

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Identification of a hidden strain switch provides clues to an ancient structural mechanism in protein kinases.

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