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BPTI folding revisited: switching a disulfide into methylene thioacetal reveals a previously hidden path.

ABSTRACT: Bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI) is a 58-residue protein that is stabilized by three disulfide bonds at positions 5-55, 14-38 and 30-51. Widely studied for about 50 years, BPTI represents a folding model for many disulfide-rich proteins. In the study described below, we replaced the solvent exposed 14-38 disulfide bond with a methylene thioacetal bridge in an attempt to arrest the folding pathway of the protein at its two well-known intermediates, N' and N*. The modified protein was expected to be unable to undergo the rate-determining step in the widely accepted BPTI folding mechanism: the opening of the 14-38 disulfide bond followed by rearrangements that leads to the native state, N. Surprisingly, instead of halting BPTI folding at N' and N*, we uncovered a hidden pathway involving a direct reaction between the N* intermediate and the oxidizing reagent glutathione (GSSG) to form the disulfide-mixed intermediate N*-SG, which spontaneously folds into N. On the other hand, N' was unable to fold into N. In addition, we found that the methylene thioacetal bridge enhances BPTI stability while fully maintaining its structure and biological function. These findings suggest a general strategy for enhancing protein stability without compromising on function or structure, suggesting potential applications for future therapeutic protein production.

SUBMITTER: Mousa R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5982216 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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BPTI folding revisited: switching a disulfide into methylene thioacetal reveals a previously hidden path.

Mousa Reem R Lansky Shifra S Shoham Gil G Metanis Norman N

Chemical science 20180502 21

Bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI) is a 58-residue protein that is stabilized by three disulfide bonds at positions 5-55, 14-38 and 30-51. Widely studied for about 50 years, BPTI represents a folding model for many disulfide-rich proteins. In the study described below, we replaced the solvent exposed 14-38 disulfide bond with a methylene thioacetal bridge in an attempt to arrest the folding pathway of the protein at its two well-known intermediates, N' and N*. The modified protein was ex ...[more]

PMID: 29910933

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Project description:The protein secretory pathway must maintain homoeostasis while producing a wide assortment of proteins in different conditions. It is also used extensively to produce many useful proteins in biotechnology. As such, secretory pathway dysfunction can be highly detrimental to the cell, resulting in the molecular basis for many human diseases, and can drastically inhibit product titers in biochemical production. Because the secretory pathway is a highly-integrated, multi-organelle system, dysfunction can happen at many levels and dissecting the root cause can be challenging. To better understand some of these dysfunctions, we measured multiple systems-level states of the cell (physiology, transcriptome, metabolism) while secreting a small protein (insulin precursor) or a large protein (?-amylase). This was carried out in the presence and absence of HAC1, a key transcription factor in maintaining secretory homeostasis. Clear trends in cellular stress were apparent across multiple data resulting from our perturbations. In particular, processes involving (1) degradation of protein / recycling amino acids, (2) overall transcription/translation repression, and (3) oxidative stress. Apparent runaway oxidative radical production was explained by a thermodynamic model that we put forward for disulfide formation in the endoplasmic reticulum. This model predicts that balancing the relative rates of protein folding and disulfide bond formation are key to easing oxidative stress. These predictions have direct implications in how to engineer a broad range of recombinant proteins for secretion and provide potential hypotheses for the root causes of several secretory-associated diseases. Yeast strains were constructed that produce and secrete (a) IP or (b) ?-amylase and were compared to yeast strains containing (c) an empty vector in both wild-type and HAC1 deletion backgrounds. These strains are named WN (WT with empty vector), WI (WT secreting IP), WA (WT secreting ?-amylase), dN (?hac1 with empty vector), dI (?hac1 secreting IP), and dA (?hac1 secreting ?-amylase). Strains were characterized in batch fermentation and samples were taken in mid-exponential phase. Triplicate fermentations were carried out for each strain.

Dataset Information

BPTI folding revisited: switching a disulfide into methylene thioacetal reveals a previously hidden path.

Publications

BPTI folding revisited: switching a disulfide into methylene thioacetal reveals a previously hidden path.

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