SummaryRecognition between sperm and the egg surface marks the beginning of life in all sexually reproducing organisms. This fundamental biological event depends on the species-specific interaction between rapidly evolving counterpart molecules on the gametes. We report biochemical, crystallographic, and mutational studies of domain repeats 1–3 of invertebrate egg coat protein VERL and their interaction with cognate sperm protein lysin. VERL repeats fold like the functionally essential N-terminal repeat of mammalian sperm receptor ZP2, whose structure is also described here. Whereas sequence-divergent repeat 1 does not bind lysin, repeat 3 binds it non-species specifically via a high-affinity, largely hydrophobic interface. Due to its intermediate binding affinity, repeat 2 selectively interacts with lysin from the same species. Exposure of a highly positively charged surface of VERL-bound lysin suggests that complex formation both disrupts the organization of egg coat filaments and triggers their electrostatic repulsion, thereby opening a hole for sperm penetration and fusion.

Cysteine (Cys) plays a major role in growth and survival of the human parasite Entamoeba histolytica. We report here the crystal structure of serine acetyltransferase (SAT) isoform 1, a cysteine biosynthetic pathway enzyme from E. histolytica (EhSAT1) at 1.77 Å , in complex with its substrate serine (Ser) at 1.59 Å and inhibitor Cys at 1.78 Å resolution. EhSAT1 exists as a trimer both in solution as well as in crystal structure, unlike hexamers formed by other known SATs. The difference in oligomeric state is due to the N-terminal region of the EhSAT1, which has very low sequence similarity to known structures, also differs in orientation and charge distribution. The Ser and Cys bind to the same site, confirming that Cys is a competitive inhibitor of Ser. The disordered C-terminal region and the loop near the active site are responsible for solvent-accessible acetyl-CoA binding site and, thus, lose inhibition to acetyl-CoA by the feedback inhibitor Cys. Docking and fluorescence studies show that EhSAT1 C-terminal-mimicking peptides can bind to O-acetyl serine sulfhydrylase (EhOASS), whereas native C-terminal peptide does not show any binding. To test further, C-terminal end of EhSAT1 was mutated and found that it inhibits EhOASS, confirming modified EhSAT1 can bind to EhOASS. The apparent inability of EhSAT1 to form a hexamer and differences in the C-terminal region are likely to be the major reasons for the lack of formation of the large cysteine synthase complex and loss of a complex regulatory mechanism in E. histolytica.In bacteria and plants, L-cysteine is synthesized from L-Serine by two key enzymes serine acetyltransferase (SAT) 3 and O-acetyl serine sulfhydrylase (OASS). SAT converts L-Serine to O-acetyl serine by transferring an acetyl group from acetylCoA. Later, OASS converts the O-acetyl serine (OAS) to L-cys-

We present a strategy to obtain milligrams of highly post-translationally modified eukaryotic proteins, transiently expressed in mammalian cells as rigid or cleavable fusions with a mammalianized version of bacterial maltose-binding protein (mMBP). This variant was engineered to combine mutations that enhance MBP solubility and affinity purification, as well as provide crystal-packing interactions for increased crystallizability. Using this cell type-independent approach, we could increase the expression of secreted and intracellular human proteins up to 200-fold. By molecular replacement with MBP, we readily determined five novel high-resolution structures of rigid fusions of targets that otherwise defied crystallization.

The explosive epidemicity of amoebiasis caused by the facultative gastrointestinal protozoan parasite Entamoeba histolytica is a major public health problem in developing countries. Multidrug resistance and side effects of various available antiamoebic drugs necessitate the design of novel antiamobeic agents. The cysteine biosynthetic pathway is the critical target for drug design due to its significance in the growth, survival and other cellular activities of E. histolytica. Here, we have screened 0.15 million natural compounds from the ZINC database against the active site of the EhOASS enzyme (PDB ID. 3BM5, 2PQM), whose structure we previously determined to 2.4 Å and 1.86 Å resolution. For this purpose, the incremental construction algorithm of GLIDE and the genetic algorithm of GOLD were used. We analyzed docking results for top ranking compounds using a consensus scoring function of X-Score to calculate the binding affinity and using ligplot to measure protein-ligand interactions. Fifteen compounds that possess good inhibitory activity against EhOASS active site were identified that may act as potential high affinity inhibitors. In vitro screening of a few commercially available compounds established their biological activity. The first ranked compound ZINC08931589 had a binding affinity of ∼8.05 µM and inhibited about 73% activity at 0.1 mM concentration, indicating good correlation between in silico prediction and in vitro inhibition studies. This compound is thus a good starting point for further development of strong inhibitors.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) represents a neurological disorder, which is caused by enzymatic degradation of an amyloid precursor protein into short peptide fragments that undergo association to form insoluble plaques. Preliminary studies suggest that cyanobacterial extracts, especially the light-harvesting protein phycocyanin, may provide a means to control the progression of the disease. However, the molecular mechanism of disease control remains elusive. In the present study, intact hexameric phycocyanin was isolated and crystallized from the cyanobacterium Leptolyngbya sp. N62DM, and the structure was solved to a resolution of 2.6 A. Molecular docking studies show that the phycocyanin αβ-dimer interacts with the enzyme β-secretase, which catalyzes the proteolysis of the amyloid precursor protein to form plaques. The molecular docking studies suggest that the interaction between phycocyanin and β-secretase is energetically more favorable than previously reported inhibitor-β-secretase interactions. Transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans worms, with a genotype to serve as an AD-model, were significantly protected by phycocyanin. Therefore, the present study provides a novel structure-based molecular mechanism of phycocyanin-mediated therapy against AD.

Cysteine is a crucial substrate for the synthesis of glutathione and trypanothione, which in turn maintain intracellular redox homeostasis and defend against oxidative stress in the pathogen Leishmania donovani. Here, the identification, sequencing, characterization and crystal structure at 1.79 Å resolution of O-acetylserine sulfhydrylase (OASS), a cysteine-biosynthetic pathway enzyme from L. donovani (LdOASS), are reported. It shows binding to the serine acetyltransferase (SAT) C-terminal peptide, indicating that OASS and SAT interact with each other to form a cysteine synthase complex, further confirmed by the structure of LdOASS in complex with SAT C-terminal octapeptide at 1.68 Å resolution. Docking and fluorescence binding studies show that almost all SAT C-terminus mimicking tetrapeptides can bind to LdOASS. Some peptides had a higher binding affinity than the native peptide, indicating that SAT-OASS interactions are not sequence-specific. The structure of LdOASS with a designed peptide (DWSI) revealed that LdOASS makes more interactions with the designed peptide than with the native peptide. In almost all known SAT-OASS interactions the SAT C-terminal sequence was shown to contain amino acids with large side chains. Structural comparison with other OASSs revealed that LdOASS has a relatively less open active-site cleft, which may be responsible for its interaction with the smaller-amino-acid-containing C-terminal LdSAT peptide. Biochemical studies confirmed that LdOASS interacts with SATs from Entamoeba histolytica and Brucella abortus, further displaying its sequence-independent and versatile mode of interaction with SATs. This implicates a critical role of the size of the active-site cleft opening in OASS for SAT-OASS interaction and thus cysteine synthase complex formation.

D-Phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (PGDH) catalyzes the first committed step of the phosphorylated serine biosynthesis pathway. Here, we report for the first time, the crystal structures of Type IIIK PGDH from Entamoeba histolytica in the apo form, as well as in complexes with substrate (3-phosphoglyceric acid) and cofactor (NAD + ) to 2.45, 1.8 and 2.2 A resolution, respectively. Comparison of the apo structure with the substrate-bound structure shows that the substrate-binding domain is rotated by~20°to close the active-site cleft. The cofactor-bound structure also shows a closed-cleft conformation, in which NAD + is bound to the nucleotide-binding domain and a formate ion occupies the substrate-binding site. Superposition of the substrate-and cofactor-bound structures represents a snapshot of the enzyme in the active form, where C2 of the substrate and C4N of the cofactor are 2.2 A apart, and the amino group of Lys263 is close enough to the substrate to remove the proton from the hydroxyl group of PGA, indicating the role of Lys in the catalysis. Mutation of Lys263 to Ala yields just 0.8% of the specific activity of the wild-type enzyme, revealing that Lys263 indeed plays an integral role in the catalytic activity. The detectable activity of the mutant, however, indicates that after 20°rotation of the substrate-binding domain, the resulting positions of the substrate and cofactor are sufficiently close to make a productive reaction. DatabaseThe atomic coordinates and structure factors have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank, www.pdb.org (PDB ID code 4NFY, 4NJM and 4NJO) Structured digital abstract• EhPGDH and EhPGDH bind by x-ray crystallography (View interaction) • EhPGDH and EhPGDH bind by molecular sieving (View interaction)

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