Structure of the human epithelial sodium channel by cryo-electron microscopy
Abstract
The epithelial sodium channel (ENaC), a member of the ENaC/DEG superfamily, regulates Na+ and water homeostasis. ENaCs assemble as heterotrimeric channels that harbor protease-sensitive domains critical for gating the channel. Here we present the structure of human ENaC in the uncleaved state determined by single-particle cryo-electron microscopy. The ion channel is composed of a large extracellular domain and a narrow transmembrane domain. The structure reveals that ENaC assembles with a 1:1:1 stoichiometry of α:β:γ subunits arranged in a counter-clockwise manner. The shape of each subunit is reminiscent of a hand with key gating domains of a 'finger' and a 'thumb'. Wedged between these domains is the elusive protease-sensitive inhibitory domain poised to regulate conformational changes of the 'finger' and 'thumb'; thus, the structure provides the first view of the architecture of inhibition of ENaC.
Data availability
The three-dimensional cryo-EM density map and the coordinate for the structure of ΔENAC have been deposited in the EM Database and Protein Data Bank under the accession codes EMD-7130 and 6BQN, respectively.
-
ΔENaC model coordinatesAvailable at PDB, freely with attribution, provided the user agrees to abide by the conditions described in the PDB Advisory Notice.
-
ΔENaC map, FSCAvailable at PDB, freely with attribution, provided the user agrees to abide by the conditions described in the PDB Advisory Notice.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (DP5OD017871)
- Isabelle Baconguis
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Sriram Subramaniam, National Cancer Institute, United States
Version history
- Received: June 19, 2018
- Accepted: September 18, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 25, 2018 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: October 22, 2018 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2018, Noreng 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
-
- 8,993
- views
-
- 1,385
- downloads
-
- 141
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
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)
Further reading
-
eLife has published papers on topics related to the molecular structure and functional mechanisms of a diverse array of ion channel proteins.
-
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Proton-coupled oligopeptide transporters (POTs) are of great pharmaceutical interest owing to their promiscuous substrate binding site that has been linked to improved oral bioavailability of several classes of drugs. Members of the POT family are conserved across all phylogenetic kingdoms and function by coupling peptide uptake to the proton electrochemical gradient. Cryo-EM structures and alphafold models have recently provided new insights into different conformational states of two mammalian POTs, SLC15A1, and SLC15A2. Nevertheless, these studies leave open important questions regarding the mechanism of proton and substrate coupling, while simultaneously providing a unique opportunity to investigate these processes using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Here, we employ extensive unbiased and enhanced-sampling MD to map out the full SLC15A2 conformational cycle and its thermodynamic driving forces. By computing conformational free energy landscapes in different protonation states and in the absence or presence of peptide substrate, we identify a likely sequence of intermediate protonation steps that drive inward-directed alternating access. These simulations identify key differences in the extracellular gate between mammalian and bacterial POTs, which we validate experimentally in cell-based transport assays. Our results from constant-PH MD and absolute binding free energy (ABFE) calculations also establish a mechanistic link between proton binding and peptide recognition, revealing key details underpining secondary active transport in POTs. This study provides a vital step forward in understanding proton-coupled peptide and drug transport in mammals and pave the way to integrate knowledge of solute carrier structural biology with enhanced drug design to target tissue and organ bioavailability.