Recombinant l-glutaminase obtained from Geobacillus thermodenitrificans DSM-465: characterization and in silico elucidation of conserved structural domains.

Glutaminase (GLS) is an enzyme essential for amino acid metabolism; in particular, it acts as a catalyst in glutaminolysis, a reaction exploited by the malignant cells to meet the nutrient requirements for their accelerated growth and proliferation. Via regulating the initial reaction of the glutaminolysis pathway, glutaminase offers an intriguing target for the development of anticancer drugs. In the present study, we produced a recombinant glutaminase from Geobacillus thermodenitrificans DSM-465 in E. coli. The enzyme was purified to electrophoretic homogeneity, with 40% recovery and 22.36 fold purity. It exhibited a molecular weight of 33 kDa, with an optimum pH and temperature of 9 and 70 °C, respectively. The K M value of the purified enzyme was 104 µM for l-glutamine. A 3D model was built for the enzyme using Swiss-Model and subjected to molecular docking with the substrate and potential inhibitors. Moreover, the subject enzyme was compared with the human kidney type GLS-K by ConSurf and TM-align servers for evolutionary conserved residues and structural domains. Despite having less than 40% amino acid identity, the superimposed monomers of both enzymes exhibited ∼94% structural identity. With a positional difference, the active site residues Ser65, Asn117, Glu162, Asn169, Tyr193, Tyr245, and Val263 found in the bacterial enzyme were also conserved in the human GLS-K. Molecular docking results have shown that CB-839 is the best inhibitor for GLS-GT and UPGL00004 is the best inhibitor for GLS-K, as designated by the binding free energy changes, i.e. ΔG -388.7 kJ mol-1 and ΔG -375 kJ mol-1, respectively. Moreover, six potential inhibitory molecules were ranked according to their binding free energy change values for both enzymes. The information can be used for the in vivo anticancer studies.

Computational Protein Phenotype Characterization of IL10RA Mutations Causative to Early Onset Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).

The deleterious amino acid substitution mutations in IL-10 receptor alpha gene are most frequently reported in several autoimmune diseases including early onset-inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Despite the important role of IL-10 RA in maintaining immune homeostasis, the specific structural and functional implications of these mutations on protein phenotype, stability, ligand binding and post translational characteristics is not well explored. Therefore, this study performed the multidimensional computational analysis of IL10RA missense variations causative to pediatric or early onset inflammatory bowel disease (<5 years of age). Our computational algorithmic screening identified the deleterious nature of p. W45G, p. Y57C, p. W69G, p.T84I, p.Y91C, p.R101W, p.R117C, and p.R117H, IBD causative IL10-RA mutations. The sensitivity and specificity analysis of different computational methods showed that CADD outperform SIFT, PolyPhen 2.0, FATHMM, LRT, MetaLR, MetaSVM, PROVEAN and Condel in predicting the pathogenicity of IL10RA mutations. Our three-dimensional protein modeling assays showed that the point mutations cause major drifts in the structural plasticity of IL10 RA molecule and negatively influence its stability. Findings from molecular docking analysis have shown that these point mutations decrease the binding affinity of IL10RA toward IL10 and may likely to disturb the IL10 signaling pathway. This study provides an easy frame work for phenotypic characterization of mutant IL10RA molecule in terms of structure, flexibility and stability aspects. Our approach may also add a new dimension to conventional functional biology assays in quickly studying IL10 RA mutations and also for designing and developing inhibitors for mutant IL10RA molecule.

Identification of variants in the mitochondrial lysine-tRNA (MT-TK) gene in myoclonic epilepsy-pathogenicity evaluation and structural characterization by in silico approach.

Variations in mitochondrial genes have an established link with myoclonic epilepsy. In the present study we evaluated the nucleotide sequence of MT-TK gene of 52 individuals from 12 unrelated families and reported three variations in 2 of the 13 epileptic patients. The DNA sequences coding for MT-TK gene were sequenced and mutations were detected in all participants. The mutations were further analyzed by the in silico analysis and their structural and pathogenic effects were determined. All the investigated patients had symptoms of myoclonus, 61.5% were positive for ataxia, 23.07% were suffering from hearing loss, 15.38% were having mild to severe dementia, 69.23% were males, and 61.53% had cousin marriage in their family history. DNA extracted from saliva was used for the PCR amplification of a 440 bp DNA fragment encompassing complete MT-TK gene. The nucleotide sequence analysis revealed three mutations, m.8306T>C, m.8313G>C, and m.8362T>G that are divergent from available reports. The identified mutations designate the heteroplasmic condition. Furthermore, pathogenicity of the identified variants was predicted by in silico tools viz., PON-mt-tRNA and MitoTIP. Secondary structure of altered MT-TK was predicted by RNAStructure web server. Studies by MitoTIP and PON-mt-tRNA tools have provided strong evidences of pathogenic effects of these mutations. Single nucleotide variations resulted in disruptive secondary structure of mutant MT-TK models, as predicted by RNAStructure. In vivo confirmation of structural and pathogenic effects of identified mutations in the animal models can be prolonged on the basis of these findings.

Biochemical and in silico evaluation of recombinant E. coli aminopeptidase and in vitro processed human interferon α-2b.

Escherichia coli is an extensively used host for the production of recombinant proteins, making its N-terminal methionine aminopeptidase (MAP) an attractive candidate for studies on posttranslational protein processing. The present study describes the recombinant production and properties of MAP from the DH5α strain of E. coli. The soluble and active enzyme was produced in E. coli BL21 (DE3) RIL - codon plus cells under a T7 promoter system and purified by anion-exchange chromatography. It exhibited a molecular weight of 29,200.94 Da by MALDI-TOF analysis. The purified enzyme showed specific activity of 1.64 U/mg with methionylp-nitroanilide and 1.51 U/mg with synthetic tetrapeptide substrate 'MGMM' in a discontinuous HPLC-based assay. In vitro studies showed the processing of up to 36% of Met-INFα-2b in 40 min. In silico studies revealed that the ES-complex formation between the enzyme and interferon has a ΔG -683.07 kJ/mol. Molecular docking results showed that the processed INFα-2b has greater binding affinity with IFNAR2 receptor as indicated by ΔG -784.53 kJ/mol, significantly lower than that of methionine containing INFα-2b (ΔG -717.63 kJ/mol). These findings emphasize the functional superiority or better efficacy of N-terminal methionine processed recombinant interferon.

A Computational Protein Phenotype Prediction Approach to Analyze the Deleterious Mutations of Human MED12 Gene.

Genetic mutations in MED12, a subunit of Mediator complex are seen in a broad spectrum of human diseases. However, the underlying basis of how these pathogenic mutations elicit protein phenotype changes in terms of 3D structure, stability and protein binding sites remains unknown. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the structural and functional impacts of MED12 mutations, using computational methods as an alternate to traditional in vivo and in vitro approaches. The MED12 gene mutations details and their corresponding clinical associations were collected from different databases and by text-mining. Initially, diverse computational approaches were applied to categorize the different classes of mutations based on their deleterious impact to MED12. Then, protein structures for wild and mutant types built by integrative modeling were analyzed for structural divergence, solvent accessibility, stability, and functional interaction deformities. Finally, this study was able to identify that genetic mutations mapped to exon-2 region, highly conserved LCEWAV and Catenin domains induce biochemically severe amino acid changes which alters the protein phenotype as well as the stability of MED12-CYCC interactions. To better understand the deleterious nature of FS-IDs and Indels, this study asserts the utility of computational screening based on their propensity towards non-sense mediated decay. Current study findings may help to narrow down the number of MED12 mutations to be screened for mediator complex dysfunction associated genetic diseases. This study supports computational methods as a primary filter to verify the plausible impact of pathogenic mutations based on the perspective of evolution, expression and phenotype of proteins. J. Cell. Biochem. 117: 2023-2035, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.