Residue proximity information and protein model discrimination using saturation-suppressor mutagenesis

Abstract

Identification of residue-residue contacts from primary sequence can be used to guide protein structure prediction. Using Escherichia coli CcdB as the test case, we describe an experimental method termed saturation-suppressor mutagenesis to acquire residue contact information. In this methodology, for each of five inactive CcdB mutants, exhaustive screens for suppressors were performed. Proximal suppressors were accurately discriminated from distal suppressors based on their phenotypes when present as single mutants. Experimentally identified putative proximal pairs formed spatial constraints to recover >98% of native-like models of CcdB from a decoy dataset. Suppressor methodology was also applied to the integral membrane protein, diacylglycerol kinase A where the structures determined by X-ray crystallography and NMR were significantly different. Suppressor as well as sequence co-variation data clearly point to the X-ray structure being the functional one adopted in-vivo. The methodology is applicable to any macromolecular system for which a convenient phenotypic assay exists.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Anusmita Sahoo

    Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
    Competing interests
    Anusmita Sahoo, is an author on a patent application filed on behalf of the Indian Institute of Science, involving saturation suppressor mutagenesis methodology.
  2. Shruti Khare

    Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
    Competing interests
    Shruti Khare, is an author on a patent application filed on behalf of the Indian Institute of Science, involving saturation suppressor mutagenesis methodology.
  3. Sivasankar Devanarayanan

    Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  4. Pankaj Jain

    Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
    Competing interests
    Pankaj Jain, is an author on a patent application filed on behalf of the Indian Institute of Science, involving saturation suppressor mutagenesis methodology.
  5. Raghavan Varadarajan

    Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
    For correspondence
    varadar@mbu.iisc.ernet.in
    Competing interests
    Raghavan Varadarajan, is an author on a patent application filed on behalf of the Indian Institute of Science, involving saturation suppressor mutagenesis methodology.

Copyright

© 2015, Sahoo et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 2,109
    views
  • 475
    downloads
  • 36
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Anusmita Sahoo
  2. Shruti Khare
  3. Sivasankar Devanarayanan
  4. Pankaj Jain
  5. Raghavan Varadarajan
(2015)
Residue proximity information and protein model discrimination using saturation-suppressor mutagenesis
eLife 4:e09532.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09532

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09532

Further reading

    1. Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    2. Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Sasha L Evans, Bethany A Haynes ... Rivka L Isaacson
    Insight

    Nature has inspired the design of improved inhibitors for cancer-causing proteins.

    1. Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Gabriel E Jara, Francesco Pontiggia ... Dorothee Kern
    Research Article

    Transition-state (TS) theory has provided the theoretical framework to explain the enormous rate accelerations of chemical reactions by enzymes. Given that proteins display large ensembles of conformations, unique TSs would pose a huge entropic bottleneck for enzyme catalysis. To shed light on this question, we studied the nature of the enzymatic TS for the phosphoryl-transfer step in adenylate kinase by quantum-mechanics/molecular-mechanics calculations. We find a structurally wide set of energetically equivalent configurations that lie along the reaction coordinate and hence a broad transition-state ensemble (TSE). A conformationally delocalized ensemble, including asymmetric TSs, is rooted in the macroscopic nature of the enzyme. The computational results are buttressed by enzyme kinetics experiments that confirm the decrease of the entropy of activation predicted from such wide TSE. TSEs as a key for efficient enzyme catalysis further boosts a unifying concept for protein folding and conformational transitions underlying protein function.