Structure of the bacterial flagellar protofilament and implications for a switch for supercoiling.

The bacterial flagellar filament is a helical propeller constructed from 11 protofilaments of a single protein, flagellin. The filament switches between left- and right-handed supercoiled forms when bacteria switch their swimming mode between running and tumbling. Supercoiling is produced by two different packing interactions of flagellin called L and R. In switching from L to R, the intersubunit distance ( approximately 52 A) along the protofilament decreases by 0.8 A. Changes in the number of L and R protofilaments govern supercoiling of the filament. Here we report the 2.0 A resolution crystal structure of a Salmonella flagellin fragment of relative molecular mass 41,300. The crystal contains pairs of antiparallel straight protofilaments with the R-type repeat. By simulated extension of the protofilament model, we have identified possible switch regions responsible for the bi-stable mechanical switch that generates the 0.8 A difference in repeat distance.

Crystallization of the F41 fragment of flagellin and data collection from extremely thin crystals.

Flagellin, which constructs supercoiled filaments of the bacterial flagellum, is very difficult to crystallize because of its strong tendency to polymerize. We therefore crystallized the F41 fragment of flagellin, which does not polymerize because terminal regions that play important roles in polymerization are cleaved off. F41 was crystallized by the hanging drop vapor diffusion method in a mixture of polyethylene glycol, glycerol, and isopropanol, with a reservoir solution covered with silicon oil. The two key factors for success in growing sufficiently large crystals were isopropanol and silicon oil, which worked well to reduce the otherwise very high nucleation rate that resulted in hundreds of tiny crystals. The crystals were grown to very thin plates with thickness less than 10 microm, which made the collection of diffraction data very difficult. Freezing and annealing of the crystals and irradiation at synchrotron beamlines had to be carried out by specific methods and under specific conditions for its structure analysis at 2.0-A resolution.

On the distribution of amino acid residues in transmembrane alpha-helix bundles.

The periodic distribution of residues in the sequence of 469 putative transmembrane alpha-helices from eukaryotic plasma membrane polytopic proteins has been analyzed with correlation matrices. The method does not involve any a priori assumption about the secondary structure of the segments or about the physicochemical properties of individual amino acid residues. Maximal correlation is observed at 3.6 residues per period, characteristic of alpha-helices. A scale extracted from the data describes the propensity of the various residues to lie on the same or on opposite helix faces. The most polar face of transmembrane helices, presumably that buried in the protein core, shows a strong enrichment in aromatic residues, while residues likely to face the fatty acyl chains of lipids are largely aliphatic.

Limitations to in vivo import of hydrophobic proteins into yeast mitochondria. The case of a cytoplasmically synthesized apocytochrome b.

The apocytochrome b gene, exclusively encoded by the mitochondrial genome, was engineered so that it could be expressed in the yeast cytoplasm. Different combinations of the apocytochrome b transmembrane domains were produced in the form of hybrid proteins fused to both the N-terminal mitochondrial targeting sequence of the ATPase subunit 9 from Neurospora crassa and to a cytoplasmic version of the bI4 RNA maturase, localised on the N-terminal and C-terminal sides, respectively, of the hydrophobic stretches. The bI4 RNA maturase, which can complement mitochondrial mutations, was used as an in vivo reporter to assess the mitochondrial import of the different groups of transmembrane helices. This new, reliable and sensitive reporter activity allowed us to experimentally determine the limitations to the mitochondrial import of hydrophobic proteins. All eight transmembrane helices of apocytochrome b could be imported into mitochondria, either alone or in combination, but no more than three to four transmembrane helices could be imported together at one time. This limit is close to that observed in the population of nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins. The hydrophobic characteristics of engineered and natural proteins targeted to the mitochondrial inner membrane revealed two factors important in the import process. These were (a) the local hydrophobicity of a transmembrane segment, and (b) the average regional hydrophobicity of the protein over an extended length of 60-80 residues. Such features may have played a major role in the evolution of mitochondrial genomes.

Rotational orientation of transmembrane alpha-helices in bacteriorhodopsin. A neutron diffraction study.

The rotational orientation of the seven transmembrane alpha-helices (A-G) in bacteriorhodopsin has been investigated by neutron diffraction. The current model of bacteriorhodopsin is based on an electron density map obtained by high-resolution electron microscopy (EM). Assigning helix rotational positions in the EM model depended on fitting large side-chains, mainly aromatic residues, into bulges in the electron density map. For helix D, which contains no aromatic residues, the EM map is more difficult to interpret. For helices A and B, whose position and orientation had been determined previously by neutron diffraction, the positions defined by EM agree within experimental error with these earlier conclusions. The orientation of all seven helices has been examined by using neutron diffraction on bacteriorhodopsin samples with specifically deuterated valine, leucine and tryptophan residues. Experimental peak intensities were compared to those predicted for an extensive set of structural models. The models were generated by (1) rotating all helices around their axis; (2) moving deuterated residues in the extramembrane loops about their probable positions and changing the weight of their contribution to the neutron diffraction pattern; (3) allowing deuterated side-chains to change their conformation. The analysis confirmed exactly the positions previously determined for helices A and B. For an optimal fit to the data to be obtained, the other five helices, including helix D, must lie either at or within 20 degrees of their position in the current EM model. The complementarity of medium-resolution EM, neutron diffraction and model building for the structural study of integral membrane proteins is discussed.