Insights into the Proton Transfer Mechanism of a Bilin Reductase PcyA Following Neutron Crystallography.

Phycocyanobilin, a light-harvesting and photoreceptor pigment in higher plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, is synthesized from biliverdin IXα (BV) by phycocyanobilin:ferredoxin oxidoreductase (PcyA) via two steps of two-proton-coupled two-electron reduction. We determined the neutron structure of PcyA from cyanobacteria complexed with BV, revealing the exact location of the hydrogen atoms involved in catalysis. Notably, approximately half of the BV bound to PcyA was BVH(+), a state in which all four pyrrole nitrogen atoms were protonated. The protonation states of BV complemented the protonation of adjacent Asp105. The "axial" water molecule that interacts with the neutral pyrrole nitrogen of the A-ring was identified. His88 Nδ was protonated to form a hydrogen bond with the lactam O atom of the BV A-ring. His88 and His74 were linked by hydrogen bonds via H3O(+). These results imply that Asp105, His88, and the axial water molecule contribute to proton transfer during PcyA catalysis.

Evaluation of intensity and pulse width of different moderators for designing a new diffractometer for protein crystals with large unit cells in J-PARC/MLF.

We plan to design a high-resolution biomacromolecule neutron time-of-flight diffractometer, which allows us to collect data from crystals with unit cells above 250 Å, in the materials and life science experimental facility at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex. This new diffractometer can be used for a detailed analysis of large proteins such as membrane proteins and supermolecular complex. A quantitative comparison of the intensity and pulse width of a decoupled moderator (DM) against a coupled moderator (CM) considering the pulse width time resolution indicated that the DM satisfies the criteria for our diffractometer rather than the CM. The results suggested that a characteristic feature of the DM, i.e., narrow pulse width with a short tail, is crucial for the separation of Bragg reflections from crystals with large unit cells. On the other hand, it should be noted that the weak signals from the DM are buried under the high-level background caused by the incoherent scattering of hydrogen atoms, especially, in the case of large unit cells. We propose a profile-fitting integration method combined with the energy loss functions and a background subtraction method achieved by employing the statistics-sensitive nonlinear iterative peak-clipping algorithm.

Evaluation of performance for IBARAKI biological crystal diffractometer iBIX with new detectors.

The IBARAKI biological crystal diffractometer, iBIX, is a high-performance time-of-flight neutron single-crystal diffractometer for elucidating mainly the hydrogen, protonation and hydration structures of biological macromolecules in various life processes. Since the end of 2008, iBIX has been available to users' experiments supported by Ibaraki University. Since August 2012, an upgrade of the 14 existing detectors has begun and 16 new detectors have been installed for iBIX. The total measurement efficiency of the present diffractometer has been improved by one order of magnitude from the previous one with the increasing of accelerator power. In December 2012, commissioning of the new detectors was successful, and collection of the diffraction dataset of ribonucrease A as a standard protein was attempted in order to estimate the performance of the upgraded iBIX in comparison with previous results. The resolution of diffraction data, equivalence among intensities of symmetry-related reflections and reliability of the refined structure have been improved dramatically. iBIX is expected to be one of the highest-performance neutron single-crystal diffractometers for biological macromolecules in the world.

Neutron and X-ray crystallographic analysis of the human α-thrombin-bivalirudin complex at pD 5.0: protonation states and hydration structure of the enzyme-product complex.

The protonation states and hydration structures of the α-thrombin-bivalirudin complex were studied by joint XN refinement of the single crystal X-ray and neutron diffraction data at resolutions of 1.6 and 2.8Å, respectively. The atomic distances were estimated by carrying out X-ray crystallographic analysis at 1.25Å resolution. The complex represents a model of the enzyme-product (EP) complex of α-thrombin. The neutron scattering length maps around the active site suggest that the side chain of H57/H was deuterated. The joint XN refinement showed that occupancies for Dδ1 and Dε2 of H57/H were 1.0 and 0.7, respectively. However, no significant neutron scattering length density was observed around the hydroxyl oxygen Oγ of S195/H, which was close to the carboxylic carbon atom of dFPR-COOH. These observations suggest that the Oγ atom of S195/H is deprotonated and maintains its nucleophilicity in the EP complex. In addition to the active site, the hydration structures of the S1 subsite and the Exosite I, which are involved in the recognition of bivalirudin, are presented.

Sequential four-state folding/unfolding of goat α-lactalbumin and its N-terminal variants.

Equilibria and kinetics of folding/unfolding of α-lactalbumin and its two N-terminal variants were studied by circular dichroism spectroscopy. The two variants were wild-type recombinant and Glu1-deletion (E1M) variants expressed in Escherichia coli. The presence of an extra methionine at the N terminus in recombinant α-lactalbumin destabilized the protein by 2 kcal/mol, while the stability was recovered in the E1M variant in which Glu1 was replaced by Met1. Kinetic folding/unfolding reactions of the proteins, induced by stopped-flow concentration jumps of guanidine hydrochloride, indicated the presence of a burst-phase in refolding, and gave chevron plots with significant curvatures in both the folding and unfolding limbs. The folding-limb curvature was interpreted in terms of accumulation of the burst-phase intermediate. However, there was no burst phase observed in the unfolding kinetics to interpret the unfolding-limb curvature. We thus assumed a sequential four-state mechanism, in which the folding from the burst-phase intermediate takes place via two transition states separated by a high-energy intermediate. We estimated changes in the free energies of the burst-phase intermediate and two transition states, caused by the N-terminal variations and also by the presence of stabilizing calcium ions. The Φ values at the N terminus and at the Ca(2+)-binding site thus obtained increased successively during folding, demonstrating the validity of the sequential mechanism. The stability and the folding behavior of the E1M variant were essentially identical to those of the authentic protein, allowing us to use this variant as a pseudo-wild-type α-lactalbumin in future studies.

Hydrogen-bond network and pH sensitivity in transthyretin: Neutron crystal structure of human transthyretin.

Transthyretin (TTR) is a tetrameric protein associated with human amyloidosis. In vitro, the formation of amyloid fibrils by TTR is known to be promoted by low pH. Here we show the neutron structure of TTR, focusing on the hydrogen bonds, protonation states and pH sensitivities. A large crystal was prepared at pD 7.4 for neutron protein crystallography. Neutron diffraction studies were conducted using the IBARAKI Biological Crystal Diffractometer with the time-of-flight method. The neutron structure solved at 2.0Å resolution revealed the protonation states of His88 and the detailed hydrogen-bond network depending on the protonation states of His88. This hydrogen-bond network is composed of Thr75, Trp79, His88, Ser112, Pro113, Thr118-B and four water molecules, and is involved in both monomer-monomer and dimer-dimer interactions, suggesting that the double protonation of His88 by acidification breaks the hydrogen-bond network and causes the destabilization of the TTR tetramer. In addition, the comparison with X-ray structure at pH 4.0 indicated that the protonation occurred to Asp74, His88 and Glu89 at pH 4.0. Our neutron model provides insights into the molecular stability of TTR related to the hydrogen-bond network, the pH sensitivity and the CH···O weak hydrogen bond.

Neutron structure analysis using the IBARAKI biological crystal diffractometer (iBIX) at J-PARC.

The IBARAKI Biological Crystal Diffractometer (iBIX), a new diffractometer for protein crystallography at the next-generation neutron source at J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex), has been constructed and has been operational since December 2008. Preliminary structure analyses of organic crystals showed that iBIX has high performance even at 120 kW operation and the first full data set is being collected from a protein crystal.

Different folding pathways taken by highly homologous proteins, goat alpha-lactalbumin and canine milk lysozyme.

Is the folding pathway conserved in homologous proteins? To address this question, we compared the folding pathways of goat alpha-lactalbumin and canine milk lysozyme using equilibrium and kinetic circular dichroism spectroscopy. Both Ca(2+)-binding proteins have 41% sequence identity and essentially identical backbone structures. The Phi-value analysis, based on the effect of Ca(2+) on the folding kinetics, showed that the Ca(2+)-binding site was well organized in the transition state in alpha-lactalbumin, although it was not yet organized in lysozyme. Equilibrium unfolding and hydrogen-exchange 2D NMR analysis of the molten globule intermediate also showed that different regions were stabilized in the two proteins. In alpha-lactalbumin, the Ca(2+)-binding site and the C-helix were weakly organized, whereas the A- and B-helices, both distant from the Ca(2+)-binding site, were well organized in lysozyme. The results thus provide an example of highly homologous proteins taking different folding pathways. To understand the molecular origin of this difference, we investigated the native three-dimensional structures of the proteins in terms of non-local contact clusters, a parameter based on the residue-residue contact map and known to be well correlated with the folding rate of non-two-state proteins. There were remarkable differences between the proteins in the distribution of the non-local contact clusters, and these differences provided a reasonable explanation of the observed difference in the folding initiation sites. In conclusion, the protein folding pathway is determined not only by the backbone topology but also by the specific side-chain interactions of contacting residues.

The equilibrium unfolding intermediate observed at pH 4 and its relationship with the kinetic folding intermediates in green fluorescent protein.

Folding mechanisms of a variant of green fluorescent protein (F99S/M153T/V163A) were investigated by a wide variety of spectroscopic techniques. Equilibrium measurements on acid-induced denaturation of the protein monitored by chromophore and tryptophan fluorescence and small-angle X-ray scattering revealed that this protein accumulates at least two equilibrium intermediates, a native-like intermediate and an unfolding intermediate, the latter of which exhibits the characteristics of the molten globule state under moderately denaturing conditions at pH 4. To elucidate the role of the equilibrium unfolding intermediate in folding, a series of kinetic refolding experiments with various combinations of initial and final pH values, including pH 7.5 (the native condition), pH 4.0 (the moderately denaturing condition where the unfolding intermediate is accumulated), and pH 2.0 (the acid-denaturing condition) were carried out by monitoring chromophore and tryptophan fluorescence. Kinetic on-pathway intermediates were accumulated during the folding on the refolding reaction from pH 2.0 to 7.5. However, the signal change corresponding to the conversion from the acid-denatured to the kinetic intermediate states was significantly reduced on the refolding reaction from pH 4.0 to pH 7.5, whereas only the signal change corresponding to the above conversion was observed on the refolding reaction from pH 2.0 to pH 4.0. These results indicate that the equilibrium unfolding intermediate is composed of an ensemble of the folding intermediate species accumulated during the folding reaction, and thus support a hierarchical model of protein folding.