Psychrophiles, i.e., organisms thriving permanently at near-zero temperatures, synthesize cold-active enzymes to sustain their cell cycle. These enzymes are already used in many biotechnological applications requiring high activity at mild temperatures or fast heat-inactivation rate. Most psychrophilic enzymes optimize a high activity at low temperature at the expense of substrate affinity, therefore reducing the free energy barrier of the transition state. Furthermore, a weak temperature dependence of activity ensures moderate reduction of the catalytic activity in the cold. In these naturally evolved enzymes, the optimization to low temperature activity is reached via destabilization of the structures bearing the active site or by destabilization of the whole molecule. This involves a reduction in the number and strength of all types of weak interactions or the disappearance of stability factors, resulting in improved dynamics of active site residues in the cold. Considering the subtle structural adjustments required for low temperature activity, directed evolution appears to be the most suitable methodology to engineer cold activity in biological catalysts.

SummaryThe proteomes expressed at 4°C and 18°C by the psychrophilic Antarctic bacterium Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis have been compared using two-dimensional differential in-gel electrophoresis, showing that translation, protein folding, membrane integrity and anti-oxidant activities are upregulated at 4°C. This proteomic analysis revealed that the trigger factor is the main upregulated protein at low temperature. The trigger factor is the first molecular chaperone interacting with virtually all newly synthesized polypeptides on the ribosome and also possesses a peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase activity. This suggests that protein folding at low temperatures is a rate-limiting step for bacterial growth in cold environments. It is proposed that the psychrophilic trigger factor rescues the chaperone function as both DnaK and GroEL (the major bacterial chaperones but also heat-shock proteins) are downregulated at 4°C. The recombinant psychrophilic trigger factor is a monomer that displays unusually low conformational stability with a Tm value of 33°C, suggesting that the essential chaperone function requires considerable flexibility and dynamics to compensate for the reduction of molecular motions at freezing temperatures. Its chaperone activity is strongly temperaturedependent and requires near-zero temperature to stably bind a model-unfolded polypeptide.

SummaryThe protein folding process in psychrophiles is impaired by low temperature, which exerts several physicochemical constraints, such as a decrease in the folding rate, reduced molecular diffusion rates and increased solvent viscosity, which interfere with conformational sampling. Furthermore, folding assistance is required at various folding steps according to the protein size. Recent studies in the field have provided contrasting and sometimes contradictory results, although protein folding generally appears as a rate-limiting step for the growth of psychrophiles. It is proposed here that these discrepancies reflect the diverse adaptive strategies adopted by psychrophiles in order to allow efficient protein folding at low temperature. Cold adaptations apparently superimpose on pre-existing cellular organization, resulting in different adaptive strategies. In addition, microbial lifestyle further modulates the properties of the chaperone machinery, which possibly explains the occurrence of cold-adapted and non-cold-adapted protein chaperones in psychrophiles.

Trigger factor is the first molecular chaperone interacting cotranslationally with virtually all nascent polypeptides synthesized by the ribosome in bacteria. The stability of this primary folding assistant was investigated using trigger factors from the Antarctic psychrophile Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis, the mesophile Escherichia coli, and the hyperthermophile Thermotoga maritima. This series covers nearly all temperatures encountered by living organisms. We show that proteins adapt their stability over the whole range of biological temperatures via adjustments of the same fundamental mechanisms, involving increases in enthalpic stabilization and decreases in unfolding rates, in parallel with the environmental temperature. Enthalpic stabilization in trigger factors is characterized by large increases in the melting temperature, T(m), ranging from 33 to 96.6 °C, associated with similarly large increases in unfolding enthalpy as revealed by differential scanning calorimetry. Stopped-flow spectroscopy shows that the folding rate constants for the three investigated proteins are similar, whereas the unfolding rate constants differ by several orders of magnitude, revealing that kinetic resistance to unfolding drives adjustments of protein stability. While the unusual stability of hyperthermophilic proteins has attracted much attention, this study indicates that they are an extreme case of a more general continuum, the other extreme being represented by natively unstable proteins from psychrophiles.

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