The assembly of β-barrel proteins into membranes is a fundamental process that is essential in Gram-negative bacteria, mitochondria and plastids. Our understanding of the mechanism of β-barrel assembly is progressing from studies carried out in Escherichia coli and Neisseria meningitidis. Comparative sequence analysis suggests that while many components mediating β-barrel protein assembly are conserved in all groups of bacteria with outer membranes, some components are notably absent. The Alphaproteobacteria in particular seem prone to gene loss and show the presence or absence of specific components mediating the assembly of β-barrels: some components of the pathway appear to be missing from whole groups of bacteria (e.g. Skp, YfgL and NlpB), other proteins are conserved but are missing characteristic domains (e.g. SurA). This comparative analysis is also revealing important structural signatures that are vague unless multiple members from a protein family are considered as a group (e.g. tetratricopeptide repeat (TPR) motifs in YfiO, β-propeller signatures in YfgL). Given that the process of the β-barrel assembly is conserved, analysis of outer membrane biogenesis in Alphaproteobacteria, the bacterial group that gave rise to mitochondria, also promises insight into the assembly of β-barrel proteins in eukaryotes.
Several essential biochemical processes are situated in mitochondria. The metabolic transformation of mitochondria in distinct lineages of eukaryotes created proteomes ranging from thousands of proteins to what appear to be a much simpler scenario. In the case of Entamoeba histolytica, tiny mitochondria known as mitosomes have undergone extreme reduction. Only recently a single complete metabolic pathway of sulfate activation has been identified in these organelles. The E. histolytica mitosomes do not produce ATP needed for the sulfate activation pathway and for three molecular chaperones, Cpn60, Cpn10 and mtHsp70. The already characterized ADP/ATP carrier would thus be essential to provide cytosolic ATP for these processes, but how the equilibrium of inorganic phosphate could be maintained was unknown. Finally, how the mitosomal proteins are translocated to the mitosomes had remained unclear. We used a hidden Markov model (HMM) based search of the E. histolytica genome sequence to discover candidate (i) mitosomal phosphate carrier complementing the activity of the ADP/ATP carrier and (ii) membrane-located components of the protein import machinery that includes the outer membrane translocation channel Tom40 and membrane assembly protein Sam50. Using in vitro and in vivo systems we show that E. histolytica contains a minimalist set up of the core import components in order to accommodate a handful of mitosomal proteins. The anaerobic and parasitic lifestyle of E. histolytica has produced one of the simplest known mitochondrial compartments of all eukaryotes. Comparisons with mitochondria of another amoeba, Dictystelium discoideum, emphasize just how dramatic the reduction of the protein import apparatus was after the loss of archetypal mitochondrial functions in the mitosomes of E. histolytica.
The results of some 6-31G(d) CISD MO calculations for the ground state of cyclic S 2 N 2 are reported. They give sulfur 3pπ and nitrogen 2pπ NAO occupancies of 1.501 and 1.443, respectively. These results are interpreted to indicate that the nitrogen singlet diradical character is larger than the sulfur singlet diradical character. The results of STO-6G valence bond calculations of the energies of the sulfur and nitrogen singlet diradical structures are in accord with this conclusion. However STO-6G CISD calculations give sulfur 3pπ and nitrogen 2pπ NAO occupancies of 1.664 and 1.335, respectively, thereby implying that the STO-6G calculations overestimate the extent of nitrogen diradical character. Consideration is given to the use of two equivalent increased-valence structures to provide a valence bond representation of the electronic structure of S 2 N 2 . Regardless of the degree of nitrogen or sulfur singlet diradical character, resonance between these structures, which is equivalent to resonance between the two singlet diradical and four zwitterionic Lewis structures, must provide a lower energy VB represention than does that which is obtained by use of either singlet diradical structure alone.
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