Intrinsic disorder in proteins associated with oxidative stress-induced JNK signaling.

The c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) signaling cascade is a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway that can be activated in response to a wide range of environmental stimuli. Based on the type, degree, and duration of the stimulus, the JNK signaling cascade dictates the fate of the cell by influencing gene expression through its substrate transcription factors. Oxidative stress is a result of a disturbance in the pro-oxidant/antioxidant homeostasis of the cell and is associated with a large number of diseases, such as neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and disorders of the immune system, where it activates the JNK signaling pathway. Among different biological roles ascribed to the intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and hybrid proteins containing ordered domains and intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs) are signaling hub functions, as intrinsic disorder allows proteins to undertake multiple interactions, each with a different consequence. In order to ensure precise signaling, the cellular abundance of IDPs is highly regulated, and mutations or changes in abundance of IDPs/IDPRs are often associated with disease. In this study, we have used a combination of six disorder predictors to evaluate the presence of intrinsic disorder in proteins of the oxidative stress-induced JNK signaling cascade, and as per our findings, none of the 18 proteins involved in this pathway are ordered. The highest level of intrinsic disorder was observed in the scaffold proteins, JIP1, JIP2, JIP3; dual specificity phosphatases, MKP5, MKP7; 14-3-3ζ and transcription factor c-Jun. The MAP3Ks, MAP2Ks, MAPKs, TRAFs, and thioredoxin were the proteins that were predicted to be moderately disordered. Furthermore, to characterize the predicted IDPs/IDPRs in the proteins of the JNK signaling cascade, we identified the molecular recognition features (MoRFs), posttranslational modification (PTM) sites, and short linear motifs (SLiMs) associated with the disordered regions. These findings will serve as a foundation for experimental characterization of disordered regions in these proteins, which represents a crucial step for a better understanding of the roles of IDPRs in diseases associated with this important pathway.

Reprofiling of approved drugs against SARS-CoV-2 main protease: an in-silico study.

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, currently, there are many drugs in clinical trials against this virus. Among the excellent drug targets of SARS-CoV-2 are its proteases (Nsp3 and Nsp5) that plays vital role in polyprotein processing giving rise to functional nonstructural proteins, essential for viral replication and survival. Nsp5 (also known as Mpro) hydrolyzes replicase polyprotein (1ab) at eleven different sites. For targeting Mpro, we have employed drug repurposing approach to identify potential inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 in a shorter time span. Screening of approved drugs through docking reveals Hyaluronic acid and Acarbose among the top hits which are showing strong interactions with catalytic site residues of Mpro. We have also performed docking of drugs Lopinavir, Ribavirin, and Azithromycin on SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. Further, binding of these compounds (Hyaluronic acid, Acarbose, and Lopinavir) is validated by extensive molecular dynamics simulation of 500 ns where these drugs show stable binding with Mpro. We believe that the high-affinity binding of these compounds will help in designing novel strategies for structure-based drug discovery against SARS-CoV-2.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

Understanding COVID-19 via comparative analysis of dark proteomes of SARS-CoV-2, human SARS and bat SARS-like coronaviruses.

The recently emerged coronavirus designated as SARS-CoV-2 (also known as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) or Wuhan coronavirus) is a causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is rapidly spreading throughout the world now. More than 1.21 million cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection and more than 67,000 COVID-19-associated mortalities have been reported worldwide till the writing of this article, and these numbers are increasing every passing hour. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the SARS-CoV-2 spread as a global public health emergency and admitted COVID-19 as a pandemic now. Multiple sequence alignment data correlated with the already published reports on SARS-CoV-2 evolution indicated that this virus is closely related to the bat severe acute respiratory syndrome-like coronavirus (bat SARS-like CoV) and the well-studied human SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV). The disordered regions in viral proteins are associated with the viral infectivity and pathogenicity. Therefore, in this study, we have exploited a set of complementary computational approaches to examine the dark proteomes of SARS-CoV-2, bat SARS-like, and human SARS CoVs by analysing the prevalence of intrinsic disorder in their proteins. According to our findings, SARS-CoV-2 proteome contains very significant levels of structural order. In fact, except for nucleocapsid, Nsp8, and ORF6, the vast majority of SARS-CoV-2 proteins are mostly ordered proteins containing less intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs). However, IDPRs found in SARS-CoV-2 proteins are functionally important. For example, cleavage sites in its replicase 1ab polyprotein are found to be highly disordered, and almost all SARS-CoV-2 proteins contains molecular recognition features (MoRFs), which are intrinsic disorder-based protein-protein interaction sites that are commonly utilized by proteins for interaction with specific partners. The results of our extensive investigation of the dark side of SARS-CoV-2 proteome will have important implications in understanding the structural and non-structural biology of SARS or SARS-like coronaviruses.

The dark side of Alzheimer's disease: unstructured biology of proteins from the amyloid cascade signaling pathway.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a leading cause of age-related dementia worldwide. Despite more than a century of intensive research, we are not anywhere near the discovery of a cure for this disease or a way to prevent its progression. Among the various molecular mechanisms proposed for the description of the pathogenesis and progression of AD, the amyloid cascade hypothesis, according to which accumulation of a product of amyloid precursor protein (APP) cleavage, amyloid ß (Aß) peptide, induces pathological changes in the brain observed in AD, occupies a unique niche. Although multiple proteins have been implicated in this amyloid cascade signaling pathway, their structure-function relationships are mostly unexplored. However, it is known that two major proteins related to AD pathology, Aß peptide, and microtubule-associated protein tau belong to the category of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), which are the functionally important proteins characterized by a lack of fixed, ordered three-dimensional structure. IDPs and intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs) play numerous vital roles in various cellular processes, such as signaling, cell cycle regulation, macromolecular recognition, and promiscuous binding. However, the deregulation and misfolding of IDPs may lead to disturbed signaling, interactions, and disease pathogenesis. Often, molecular recognition-related IDPs/IDPRs undergo disorder-to-order transition upon binding to their biological partners and contain specific disorder-based binding motifs, known as molecular recognition features (MoRFs). Knowing the intrinsic disorder status and disorder-based functionality of proteins associated with amyloid cascade signaling pathway may help to untangle the mechanisms of AD pathogenesis and help identify therapeutic targets. In this paper, we have used multiple computational tools to evaluate the presence of intrinsic disorder and MoRFs in 27 proteins potentially relevant to the amyloid cascade signaling pathway. Among these, BIN1, APP, APOE, PICALM, PSEN1 and CD33 were found to be highly disordered. Furthermore, their disorder-based binding regions and associated short linear motifs have also been identified. These findings represent important foundation for the future research, and experimental characterization of disordered regions in these proteins is required to better understand their roles in AD pathogenesis.