Kalman Tompa, Monika Bokor, Kyou-Hoon Han, Peter Tompa
{"title":"Hydrogen skeleton, mobility and protein architecture.","authors":"Kalman Tompa, Monika Bokor, Kyou-Hoon Han, Peter Tompa","doi":"10.4161/idp.25767","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.25767","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The mobility of the proton-proton radial vectors is introduced as a quantitative measure for the structural dynamics of organic materials, especially protein molecules. As defined for the entire molecule, the hydrogen mobility (<i>HM</i>) is proposed as an \"order parameter,\" which describes the effect of motional narrowing on inter-proton dipole-dipole interactions. <i>HM</i> satisfies all requirements of an order parameter in the Landau molecular field theory of phase transitions. The wide-line NMR second moments needed to obtain <i>HM</i> are exactly defined and measurable physical quantities, which are not produced by mathematical fitting and do not carry the limitations and restrictions of any model (theoretical formalism). We first demonstrate the usefulness of <i>HM</i> on small organic molecules with data taken form the literature. We outline its link with structural and functional characteristics on a range of proteins: <i>HM</i> provides a model-free parameter based on first principles that can clearly distinguish between globular and intrinsically disordered proteins, and can also provide insight into the behavior of disease-related mutants.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"e25767"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.25767","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"35005140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Francois-Xavier Theillet, Lajos Kalmar, Peter Tompa, Kyou-Hoon Han, Philipp Selenko, A Keith Dunker, Gary W Daughdrill, Vladimir N Uversky
{"title":"The alphabet of intrinsic disorder: I. Act like a Pro: On the abundance and roles of proline residues in intrinsically disordered proteins.","authors":"Francois-Xavier Theillet, Lajos Kalmar, Peter Tompa, Kyou-Hoon Han, Philipp Selenko, A Keith Dunker, Gary W Daughdrill, Vladimir N Uversky","doi":"10.4161/idp.24360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.24360","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A significant fraction of every proteome is occupied by biologically active proteins that do not form unique three-dimensional structures. These intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and IDP regions (IDPRs) have essential biological functions and are characterized by extensive structural plasticity. Such structural and functional behavior is encoded in the amino acid sequences of IDPs/IDPRs, which are enriched in disorder-promoting residues and depleted in order-promoting residues. In fact, amino acid residues can be arranged according to their disorder-promoting tendency to form an alphabet of intrinsic disorder that defines the structural complexity and diversity of IDPs/IDPRs. This review is the first in a series of publications dedicated to the roles that different amino acid residues play in defining the phenomenon of protein intrinsic disorder. We start with proline because data suggests that of the 20 common amino acid residues, this one is the most disorder-promoting.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"e24360"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.24360","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"35006765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kavitha Kurup, A Keith Dunker, Sankaran Krishnaswamy
{"title":"Functional fragments of disorder in outer membrane β barrel proteins.","authors":"Kavitha Kurup, A Keith Dunker, Sankaran Krishnaswamy","doi":"10.4161/idp.24848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.24848","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The traditional view of \"sequence-structure-function\" has been amended by the discovery of intrinsically disordered proteins. Almost 50% of PDB structures are now known to have one or more regions of disorder, which are involved in diverse functions. These regions typically possess low aromatic content and sequence complexity as well as high net charge and flexibility. In this study, we examined the composition and contribution of intrinsic disorder in outer membrane β barrel protein functions. Our systematic analysis to find the dual personality (DP) fragments, which often function by disorder-order transitions, revealed the presence of 61 DP fragments with 234 residues in β barrel trans membrane protein structures. It was found that though the disorder is more prevalent in the periplasmic regions, most of the residues which undergo disorder-order transitions are found in the extracellular regions. For example, the calcium binding sites in BtuB protein are found to undergo disorder to order transition upon binding calcium. The conformational change in the cell receptor binding site of the OpcA protein, which is important in host cell interactions of <i>N. meningitidis,</i> was also found to be due to the disorder-order transitions occurring in the presence of the ligand. The natively disordered nature of DP fragments makes it more appropriate to call them \"functional fragments of disorder.\" The present study provides insight into the roles played by intrinsically disordered regions in outer membrane protein functions.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"e24848"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.24848","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"35006766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A method to trap transient and weak interacting protein complexes for structural studies.","authors":"Vishnu Priyanka Reddy Chichili, Veerendra Kumar, J Sivaraman","doi":"10.4161/idp.25464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.25464","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Several key biological events adopt a \"hit-and-run\" strategy in their transient interactions between binding partners. In some instances, the disordered nature of one of the binding partners severely hampers the success of co-crystallization, often leading to the crystallization of just one of the partners. Here, we discuss a method to trap weak and transient protein interactions for crystallization. This approach requires the structural details of at least one of the interacting partners and binding knowledge to dock the known minimum binding region (peptide) of the protein onto the other using an optimal-sized linker. Prior to crystallization, the purified linked construct should be verified for its intact folding and stability. Following structure determination, structure-guided functional studies are performed with independent, full-length unlinked proteins to validate the findings of the linked complex. We designed this approach and then validated its efficacy using a 24 amino acid minimum binding region of the intrinsically disordered, neuron-specific substrates, Neurogranin and Neuromodulin, joined via a Gly-linker to their interacting partner, Calmodulin. Moreover, the reported functional studies with independent full-length proteins confirmed the findings of the linked peptide complexes. Based on our studies, and in combination with the supporting literature, we suggest that optimized linkers can provide an environment to mimic the natural interactions between binding partners, and offer a useful strategy for structural studies to trap weak and transient interactions involved in several biological processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"e25464"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.25464","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"35005137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MFDp2: Accurate predictor of disorder in proteins by fusion of disorder probabilities, content and profiles.","authors":"Marcin J Mizianty, Zhenling Peng, Lukasz Kurgan","doi":"10.4161/idp.24428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.24428","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are either entirely disordered or contain disordered regions in their native state. IDPs were found to be abundant in complex organisms and implicated in numerous cellular processes. Experimental annotation of disorder lags behind the rapidly growing sizes of the protein databases, and thus computational methods are used to close this gap and to investigate the disorder. MFDp2 is a novel content-rich and user-friendly web server for sequence-based prediction of protein disorder that builds upon our residue-level disorder predictor MFDp and chain-level disorder content predictor DisCon. It applies novel post-processing filters and uses sequence alignment to improve predictive quality. Using a new benchmark data set, which has reduced sequence identity to corresponding training data sets, MFDp2 is shown to provide competitive predictive quality when compared with MFDp and a comprehensive set of 13 other state-of-the-art predictors, including publicly available versions of the top predictors from CASP9. Our server obtains the highest Mathews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) and the second best Area Under the receiver operating characteristic Curve (AUC). In addition to the disorder predictions, our server also outputs well-described sequence-derived information that allows profiling the predicted disorder. We conveniently visualize sequence conservation, predicted secondary structure, relative solvent accessibility and alignments to chains with annotated disorder. We allow predictions for multiple proteins at the same time and each prediction can be downloaded as text-based (parsable) file. The web server, which includes help pages and tutorial, is freely available at biomine.ece.ualberta.ca/MFDp2/.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"e24428"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.24428","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"35006764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Designing disorder: Tales of the unexpected tails.","authors":"David P Minde, Els F Halff, Sander Tans","doi":"10.4161/idp.26790","DOIUrl":"10.4161/idp.26790","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Protein tags of various sizes and shapes catalyze progress in biosciences. Well-folded tags can serve to solubilize proteins. Small, unfolded, peptide-like tags have become invaluable tools for protein purification as well as protein-protein interaction studies. Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDPs), which lack unique 3D structures, received exponentially increasing attention during the last decade. Recently, large ID tags have been developed to solubilize proteins and to engineer the pharmacological properties of protein and peptide pharmaceuticals. Here, we contrast the complementary benefits and applications of both folded and ID tags based on predictions of ID. Less structure often means more function in a shorter tag.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"e26790"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.26790","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"35004580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Biophysical characterization of α-synuclein and its controversial structure.","authors":"T Reid Alderson, John L Markley","doi":"10.4161/idp.26255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.26255","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>α-synuclein, a presynaptic protein of poorly defined function, constitutes the main component of Parkinson disease-associated Lewy bodies. Extensive biophysical investigations have provided evidence that isolated α-synuclein is an intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) in vitro. Subsequently serving as a model IDP in numerous studies, α-synuclein has aided in the development of many technologies used to characterize IDPs and arguably represents the most thoroughly analyzed IDP to date. Recent reports, however, have challenged the disordered nature of α-synuclein inside cells and have instead proposed a physiologically relevant helical tetramer. Despite α-synuclein's rich biophysical history, a single coherent picture has not yet emerged concerning its in vivo structure, dynamics, and physiological role(s). We present herein a review of the biophysical discoveries, developments, and models pertinent to the characterization of α-synuclein's structure and analysis of the native tetramer controversy. </p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"18-39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.26255","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"32180108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strain phenomenon in protein aggregation: Interplay between sequence and conformation.","authors":"Leonid Breydo","doi":"10.4161/idp.27130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.27130","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Studies of yeast and mammalian prions introduced the idea that the protein aggregates can exist in multiple stable conformations that can be propagated by seeding. These conformational states (aka strains) were shown to have distinct physical (secondary structure, stability) and biological (cytotoxicity, infectivity) properties. For mammalian prions they were also tied to differences in disease pathology and incubation time. It was later shown that this phenomenon is not limited to prion proteins, and distinct conformational states of amyloid fibrils and oligomers derived from a variety of proteins can be propagated both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, in some cases these conformations were preserved even when propagated into a protein with a different sequence. There is now an increasing body of evidence that strain phenomenon is a generic feature of protein aggregation, and characteristic features of amyloid strains can be transmitted between unrelated sequences.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"e27130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.27130","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"35004634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Structural phylogeny by profile extraction and multiple superimposition using electrostatic congruence as a discriminator.","authors":"Sandeep Chakraborty, Basuthkar J Rao, Nathan Baker, Bjarni Asgeirsson","doi":"10.4161/idp.25463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.25463","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Phylogenetic analysis of proteins using multiple sequence alignment (MSA) assumes an underlying evolutionary relationship in these proteins which occasionally remains undetected due to considerable sequence divergence. Structural alignment programs have been developed to unravel such fuzzy relationships. However, none of these structure based methods have used electrostatic properties to discriminate between spatially equivalent residues. We present a methodology for MSA of a set of related proteins with known structures using electrostatic properties as an additional discriminator (STEEP). STEEP first extracts a profile, then generates a multiple structural superimposition providing a consolidated spatial framework for comparing residues and finally emits the MSA. Residues that are aligned differently by including or excluding electrostatic properties can be targeted by directed evolution experiments to transform the enzymatic properties of one protein into another. We have compared STEEP results to those obtained from a MSA program (ClustalW) and a structural alignment method (MUSTANG) for chymotrypsin serine proteases. Subsequently, we used PhyML to generate phylogenetic trees for the serine and metallo-β-lactamase superfamilies from the STEEP generated MSA, and corroborated the accepted relationships in these superfamilies. We have observed that STEEP acts as a functional classifier when electrostatic congruence is used as a discriminator, and thus identifies potential targets for directed evolution experiments. In summary, STEEP is unique among phylogenetic methods for its ability to use electrostatic congruence to specify mutations that might be the source of the functional divergence in a protein family. Based on our results, we also hypothesize that the active site and its close vicinity contains enough information to infer the correct phylogeny for related proteins.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.25463","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"32787762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shelly DeForte, Krishna D Reddy, Vladimir N Uversky
{"title":"Digested disorder: Quarterly intrinsic disorder digest (April-May-June, 2013).","authors":"Shelly DeForte, Krishna D Reddy, Vladimir N Uversky","doi":"10.4161/idp.27454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4161/idp.27454","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The current literature on intrinsically disordered proteins is overwhelming. To keep interested readers up to speed with this literature, we continue a \"Digested Disorder\" project and represent a series of reader's digest type articles objectively representing the research papers and reviews on intrinsically disordered proteins. The only 2 criteria for inclusion in this digest are the publication date (a paper should be published within the covered time frame) and topic (a paper should be dedicated to any aspect of protein intrinsic disorder). The current digest issue covers papers published during the period of April, May, and June of 2013. The papers are grouped hierarchically by topics they cover, and for each of the included paper a short description is given on its major findings.</p>","PeriodicalId":90188,"journal":{"name":"Intrinsically disordered proteins","volume":"1 1","pages":"e27454"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4161/idp.27454","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"35004583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}