Inward-facing conformation of glutamate transporters as revealed by their inverted-topology structural repeats.

Glutamate transporters regulate synaptic concentrations of this neurotransmitter by coupling its flux to that of sodium and other cations. Available crystal structures of an archeal homologue of these transporters, GltPh, resemble an extracellular-facing state, in which the bound substrate is occluded only by a small helical hairpin segment called HP2. However, a pathway to the cytoplasmic side of the membrane is not clearly apparent. We previously modeled an alternate state of a transporter from the neurotransmitter:sodium symporter family, which has an entirely different fold, solely on the presence of inverted-topology structural repeats. In GltPh, we identified two distinct sets of inverted-topology repeats and used these repeats to model an inward-facing conformation of the protein. To test this model, we introduced pairs of cysteines into the neuronal glutamate transporter EAAC1, at positions that are >27 A apart in the crystal structures of GltPh, but approximately = 10 A apart in the inward-facing model. Transport by these mutants was activated by pretreatment with the reducing agent dithithreitol. Subsequent treatment with the oxidizing agent copper(II)(1,10-phenantroline)(3) abolished this activation. The inhibition of transport was potentiated under conditions thought to promote the inward-facing conformation of the transporter. By contrast, the inhibition was reduced in the presence of the nontransportable substrate analogue D,L-threo-beta-benzyloxyaspartate, which favors the outward-facing conformation. Other conformation-sensitive accessibility measurements are also accommodated by our inward-facing model. These results suggest that the inclusion of inverted-topology repeats in transporters may provide a general solution to the requirement for two symmetry-related states in a single protein.

Crystallographic and mutational studies of seryl-tRNA synthetase from the archaeon Pyrococcus horikoshii.

Seryl-tRNA synthetase (SerRS) catalyzes the ligation of serine to the 3'-end of serine tRNA (tRNA(Ser)), which is typical of the type-2 tRNAs characterized by a long extra arm. The SerRSs are divided into two types, the archaeal/eukaryal and bacterial types. In this study, we solved the crystal structures of the SerRS from the archaeon Pyrococcus horikoshii bound with 5'-O-[N-(L-seryl)-sulfamoyl]-adenosine at 2.6 A and with ATP at 2.8 A, as well as in the apo form at 3.0 A. P. horikoshii SerRS recognizes the seryl and adenylate moieties in a manner similar to those of the bacterial and mitochondrial SerRSs from Thermus thermophilus and Bos taurus, respectively, but different from that of the unusual SerRS from the methanogenic archaeon Methanosarcina barkeri. P. horikoshii SerRS efficiently aminoacylated not only P. horikoshii tRNA(Ser) but also bacterial tRNA(Ser)s from T. thermophilus and Escherichia coli. Models of P. horikoshii SerRS bound with the T. thermophilus and P. horikoshii tRNA(Ser)s suggested that the helical domain of P. horikoshii SerRS is involved in the extra arm binding. This region of P. horikoshii SerRS has additional basic residues as compared with T. thermophilus SerRS, and a Trp residue specific to the archaeal/eukaryal SerRSs. Mutational analyses revealed that the basic and Trp residues are important for tRNA aminoacylation. P. horikoshii SerRS has the archaea-specific insertion, which collaborates with the core domain to form a basic channel leading to the active site. Two sulfate ions are bound to the channel, suggesting that the tRNA 3' region might bind to the channel.

Thermodynamic basis for the stabilities of three CutA1s from Pyrococcus horikoshii,Thermus thermophilus, and Oryza sativa, with unusually high denaturation temperatures.

In order to elucidate the stabilization mechanism of CutA1 from Pyrococcus horikoshii (PhCutA1) with a denaturation temperature of nearly 150 degrees C, GuHCl denaturation and heat denaturation were examined at neutral and acidic pHs. As a comparison, CutA1 proteins from Thermus thermophilus (TtCutA1) and Oryza sativa (OsCutA1) were also examined, which have lower optimum growth temperatures of 75 and 28 degrees C, respectively, than that (98 degrees C) of P. horikoshii. GuHCl-induced unfolding and refolding curves of the three proteins showed hysteresis effects due to an unusually slow unfolding rate. The midpoints of refolding for PhCutA1, TtCutA1 and OsCutA1 were 5.7 M, 3.3 M, and 2.3 M GuHCl, respectively, at pH 8.0 and 37 degrees C. DSC experiments with TtCutA1 and OsCutA1 showed that the denaturation temperatures were remarkably high, 112.8 and 97.3 degrees C, respectively, at pH 7.0 and that the good heat reversibility was amenable to thermodynamic analyses. At acidic pH, TtCutA1 showed higher stability to both heat and denaturant than PhCutA1. Combined with the data for DSC and denaturant denaturation, the unfolding Gibbs energy of PhCutA1 could be depicted as a function of temperature. It was experimentally revealed that (1) the unusually high stability of PhCutA1 basically originates from a common trimer structure of the three proteins, (2) the stability of PhCutA1 is superior to those of the other two CutA1s over all temperatures above 0 degrees C at neutral pH, due to the decrease in both enthalpy and entropy, and (3) ion pairs of PhCutA1 contribute to the unusually high stability at neutral pH.