BackgroundThe genus Burkholderia includes pathogenic gram-negative bacteria that cause melioidosis, glanders, and pulmonary infections of patients with cancer and cystic fibrosis. Drug resistance has made development of new antimicrobials critical. Many approaches to discovering new antimicrobials, such as structure-based drug design and whole cell phenotypic screens followed by lead refinement, require high-resolution structures of proteins essential to the parasite.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe experimentally identified 406 putative essential genes in B. thailandensis, a low-virulence species phylogenetically similar to B. pseudomallei, the causative agent of melioidosis, using saturation-level transposon mutagenesis and next-generation sequencing (Tn-seq). We selected 315 protein products of these genes based on structure-determination criteria, such as excluding very large and/or integral membrane proteins, and entered them into the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infection Disease (SSGCID) structure determination pipeline. To maximize structural coverage of these targets, we applied an “ortholog rescue” strategy for those producing insoluble or difficult to crystallize proteins, resulting in the addition of 387 orthologs (or paralogs) from seven other Burkholderia species into the SSGCID pipeline. This structural genomics approach yielded structures from 31 putative essential targets from B. thailandensis, and 25 orthologs from other Burkholderia species, yielding an overall structural coverage for 49 of the 406 essential gene families, with a total of 88 depositions into the Protein Data Bank. Of these, 25 proteins have properties of a potential antimicrobial drug target i.e., no close human homolog, part of an essential metabolic pathway, and a deep binding pocket. We describe the structures of several potential drug targets in detail.Conclusions/SignificanceThis collection of structures, solubility and experimental essentiality data provides a resource for development of drugs against infections and diseases caused by Burkholderia. All expression clones and proteins created in this study are freely available by request.

High-resolution three-dimensional structures of essential Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) proteins provide templates for TB drug design, but are available for only a small fraction of the Mtb proteome. Here we evaluate an intra-genus “homolog-rescue” strategy to increase the structural information available for TB drug discovery by using mycobacterial homologs with conserved active sites. Of 179 potential TB drug targets selected for x-ray structure determination, only 16 yielded a crystal structure. By adding 1675 homologs from nine other mycobacterial species to the pipeline, structures representing an additional 52 otherwise intractable targets were solved. To determine whether these homolog structures would be useful surrogates in TB drug design, we compared the active sites of 106 pairs of Mtb and non-TB mycobacterial (NTM) enzyme homologs with experimentally determined structures, using three metrics of active site similarity, including superposition of continuous pharmacophoric property distributions. Pair-wise structural comparisons revealed that 19/22 pairs with >55% overall sequence identity had active site Cα RMSD <1Å, >85% side chain identity, and ≥80% PSAPF (similarity based on pharmacophoric properties) indicating highly conserved active site shape and chemistry. Applying these results to the 52 NTM structures described above, 41 shared >55% sequence identity with the Mtb target, thus increasing the effective structural coverage of the 179 Mtb targets over three-fold (from 9% to 32%). The utility of these structures in TB drug design can be tested by designing inhibitors using the homolog structure and assaying the cognate Mtb enzyme; a promising test case, Mtb cytidylate kinase, is described. The homolog-rescue strategy evaluated here for TB is also generalizable to drug targets for other diseases.

The Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (SSGCID) is a consortium of researchers at Seattle BioMed, Emerald BioStructures, the University of Washington and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that was established to apply structural genomics approaches to drug targets from infectious disease organisms. The SSGCID is currently funded over a five‐year period by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to determine the three‐dimensional structures of 400 proteins from a variety of Category A, B and C pathogens. Target selection engages the infectious disease research and drug‐therapy communities to identify drug targets, essential enzymes, virulence factors and vaccine candidates of biomedical relevance to combat infectious diseases. The protein‐expression systems, purified proteins, ligand screens and three‐dimensional structures produced by SSGCID constitute a valuable resource for drug‐discovery research, all of which is made freely available to the greater scientific community. This issue of Acta Crystallographica Section F, entirely devoted to the work of the SSGCID, covers the details of the high‐throughput pipeline and presents a series of structures from a broad array of pathogenic organisms. Here, a background is provided on the structural genomics of infectious disease, the essential components of the SSGCID pipeline are discussed and a survey of progress to date is presented.

The HIV-1 TAR/Tat interaction is a potentially valuable target for treating HIV infection, but efforts to develop TAR-binding antiviral drugs have not yet yielded a successful candidate for clinical development. In this work, we describe a novel approach towards screening fragments against RNA that uses a chemical probe to target the Tat binding region of TAR. This probe fulfills two critical roles in the screen: by locking the RNA into a conformation capable of binding other fragments, it simultaneously allows the identification of proximal binding fragments by ligand-based NMR. Using this approach, we have discovered six novel TAR-binding fragments, three of which were docked relative to the probe/RNA structure using experimental NMR restraints. The consistent orientations of functional groups in our data-driven docked structures and common electrostatic properties across all fragment leads reveal a surprising level of selectivity by our fragment-sized screening hits. These models further suggest linking strategies for the development of higher affinity lead compounds for the inhibition of the TAR/Tat interaction.

During human infection, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) survives the normally bacteriocidal phagosome of macrophages. Mtb and related species may be able to combat this harsh acidic environment which contains reactive oxygen species due to the mycobacterial genomes encoding a large number of dehydrogenases. Typically, dehydrogenase cofactor binding sites are open to solvent, which allows NAD/NADH exchange to support multiple turnover. Interestingly, mycobacterial short chain dehydrogenases/reductases (SDRs) within family TIGR03971 contain an insertion at the NAD binding site. Here we present crystal structures of 9 mycobacterial SDRs in which the insertion buries the NAD cofactor except for a small portion of the nicotinamide ring. Line broadening and STD-NMR experiments did not show NAD or NADH exchange on the NMR timescale. STD-NMR demonstrated binding of the potential substrate carveol, the potential product carvone, the inhibitor tricyclazol, and an external redox partner 2,6-dichloroindophenol (DCIP). Therefore, these SDRs appear to contain a non-exchangeable NAD cofactor and may rely on an external redox partner, rather than cofactor exchange, for multiple turnover. Incidentally, these genes always appear in conjunction with the mftA gene, which encodes the short peptide MftA, and with other genes proposed to convert MftA into the external redox partner mycofactocin.

f Macrophage infectivity potentiators (Mips) are immunophilin proteins and essential virulence factors for a range of pathogenic organisms. We applied a structural biology approach to characterize a Mip from Burkholderia pseudomallei (BpML1), the causative agent of melioidosis. Crystal structure and nuclear magnetic resonance analyses of BpML1 in complex with known macrocyclics and other derivatives led to the identification of a key chemical scaffold. This scaffold possesses inhibitory potency for BpML1 without the immunosuppressive components of related macrocyclic agents. Biophysical characterization of a compound series with this scaffold allowed binding site specificity in solution and potency determinations for rank ordering the set. The best compounds in this series possessed a low-micromolar affinity for BpML1, bound at the site of enzymatic activity, and inhibited a panel of homologous Mip proteins from other pathogenic bacteria, without demonstrating toxicity in human macrophages. Importantly, the in vitro activity of BpML1 was reduced by these compounds, leading to decreased macrophage infectivity and intracellular growth of Burkholderia pseudomallei. These compounds offer the potential for activity against a new class of antimicrobial targets and present the utility of a structure-based approach for novel antimicrobial drug discovery.

As part of the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease, we seek to enhance structural genomics with ligand-bound structure data which can serve as a blueprint for structure-based drug design. We have adapted fragment-based screening methods to our structural genomics pipeline to generate multiple ligand-bound structures of high priority drug targets from pathogenic organisms. In this study, we report fragment screening methods and structure determination results for 2C-methyl-D-erythritol-2,4-cyclo-diphosphate (MECP) synthase from Burkholderia pseudomallei, the gram-negative bacterium which causes melioidosis. Screening by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy as well as crystal soaking followed by X-ray diffraction led to the identification of several small molecules which bind this enzyme in a critical metabolic pathway. A series of complex structures obtained with screening hits reveal distinct binding pockets and a range of small molecules which form complexes with the target. Additional soaks with these compounds further demonstrate a subset of fragments to only bind the protein when present in specific combinations. This ensemble of fragment-bound complexes illuminates several characteristics of MECP synthase, including a previously unknown binding surface external to the catalytic active site. These ligand-bound structures now serve to guide medicinal chemists and structural biologists in rational design of novel inhibitors for this enzyme.

Multivalent inhibitors of the cholera toxin B pentamer are potential therapeutic drugs for treating cholera and serve as models for demonstrating multivalent ligand effects through a structure-based approach. A crucial yet often overlooked aspect of multivalent drug design is the length, rigidity and chemical composition of the linker used to connect multiple binding moieties. To specifically study the role of chemical linkers in multivalent ligand design, we have synthesized a series of compounds with one and two binding motifs connected by several different linkers. These compounds have affinity for and potency against the cholera toxin B pentamer despite the fact that none can simultaneously bind two toxin receptor sites. Results from saturation transfer difference NMR reveal transient, non-specific interactions between the cholera toxin and linker groups contribute significantly to overall binding affinity of monovalent compounds. However, the same random protein-ligand interactions do not appear to affect binding of bivalent molecules. Moreover, the binding affinities and potencies of these 'non-spanning' bivalent ligands appear to be wholly independent of linker length. Our detailed analysis identifies multiple effects that account for the improved inhibitory potencies of bivalent ligands and suggest approaches to further improve the activity of this class of compounds.