On the abundance and importance of AXXXA sequence motifs in globular proteins and their involvement in CβCβ interaction

The AXXXA and GXXXG motifs are frequently observed in helices, especially in membrane proteins. The motif GXXXG is known to stabilize helix-helix association in membrane proteins via C_αHO bonding. AXXXA sequence motif additionally stabilizes the folded state of proteins. We found 27,000 and 18,000 occurrences of AXXXA and GXXXG motifs in a non-redundant set of 6000 obligate homodimeric (OD) complexes. Interestingly, this is less pronounced in transient homodimers (TD) and heterodimers (HetD). On average each obligate homodimer contains four AXXXA motifs, it is 2 and 3.5 for HetD and TD, respectively. Focusing on the binding surface it is seen that 27 % of the ODs contain at least one AXXXA motif at the interface, whereas it is 17 % and 15 % for HetD and TD respectively. AXXXA predominantly stabilizes the OD quaternary structure via the side chain C_βC_β interactions. This interaction is energetically favorable and is found to be a major driving force for OD quaternary structure stability. C_β-C_β interactions are observed ∼6 times higher than the known C_αHO interaction for helix-helix stabilization. Two additional new interactions of C_βO and OO are observed at the AXXXA containing interface regions. The occurrence of the motif gets drastically reduced if any of the terminal Ala residues are replaced by Gly. Our findings show the importance of AXXXA in providing stability to the quaternary structure through specific hydrophobic interactions and the specificity of the Ala residue at motif termini. The knowledge gained can be used for designing synthetic proteins of improved stability and for designing peptide-based therapeutics.