Amide modes and protein conformation.

Genetic Engineering of Snake Toxins ROLE OF INVARIANT RESIDUES IN THE STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL PROPERTIES OF A CURAREMIMETIC TOXIN, AS PROBED BY SITE-DIRECTED MUTAGENESIS*

The first high-resolution solution-state structure of a member of the toxin-agglutinin folding motif with the WGA disulfide linkage is presented. The 1H NMR spectrum of hevein has been 100% assigned from residue 2 through residue 43, the C-terminus, using two-dimensional correlation and NOE spectroscopy. During the course of the NOESY analysis, the three-dimensional structural features of hevein were derived, using nonstereospecific distance constraints (with tight bounds) for XPLOR simulated annealing followed by unconstrained relaxation in the CHARMm force field, at two levels of long-range constraint density. In addition, a large number of low-bound-only constraints, corresponding to unobserved NOE's, were used in both refinements. The first structure elucidation employed a total of 180 distance constraints (60 of which were medium or long range, i/i+n with n or = 2) constraints were added. The average bounds precisions of the two refinements were comparable (+/- 0.44 A) and significantly tighter than those that result when a universal low bound corresponding to the sum of the van der Waals radii was used. (The more conservative treatment of NOE's gave the same final structure but required a higher constraint density before assignment errors would stand out during the refinement.) Constraint density also has a significant influence on convergence and accuracy using tight constraints. The study demonstrates that convergence within an ensemble of solution structures is not a dependable criterion for either the accuracy or precision of the derived structure. The best fitting conformers from the refinement at the higher constraint density bear a greater similarity to the solid-state structure of the domains of wheat germ agglutinin (0.95 A rmsd over residues 2-32) than to the recently reported 2.8-A X-ray structure of hevein (1.25 A rmsd over residues 2-32, 2.83 A rmsd over residues 2-42). The consensus conformer from the solution data is defined to a backbone rmsd of < 0.6 A over the full sequence for which NMR data could be collected.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Hevein: NMR assignment and assessment of solution-state folding for the agglutinin-toxin motif.

New developments in Raman spectroscopy of biological systems

The positive charge of Lys27 was suppressed by chemical means in two short-chain curaremimetic toxins, namely erabutoxin a (Ea) from Laticauda semifasciata and toxin alpha from Naja nigricollis. This modification leads to a decrease in the binding affinity of the toxins for the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, which range 6-15-fold, as judged from both the data reported here and those previously described in the literature. A negatively charged glutamate residue has been introduced at position 27 of erabutoxin a by site-directed mutagenesis. This change provokes a 120-fold decrease in the affinity, which reflects a major alteration of toxin-receptor cognate events. Using toxin-alpha derivative harbouring a photoactive group at Lys27, we probed the toxin local environment in a receptor-bound state by photocoupling experiments. The delta chain was the predominant coupling target, in contrast to previous observations indicating that a photoactive probe on Lys47 predominantly labelled the alpha chain. The toxin derivative weakly labelled the alpha and gamma chains but not the beta chain. The toxin may therefore interact with subunits other than the alpha chain, at least in the vicinity of Lys27.

https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1432-1033.1992.tb17165.x

Role and environment of the conserved Lys27 of snake curaremimetic toxins as probed by chemical modifications, site-directed mutagenesis and photolabelling experiments.

Raman spectroscopy was used to determine structural features of the native toxin alpha from Naja nigricollis, which contains only one Trp and one Tyr, and of chemically modified toxins having chromophores added to these two conserved aromatic amino acids. The percentages of secondary structure were determined by using amide I polypeptidic vibration analysis and are in agreement with X-ray structure [Low et al. (1976) Proc. Natl. Acad Sci. U.S.A. 73, 2991-2994] as well as with the geometry of the disulfide bridges estimated by using the v(S-S) vibrations. In the native toxin alpha, the single invariant tyrosine 25 appears to be buried in the structure and involved in a strong hydrogen bond. We have chemically modified these two invariant aromatic side chains by addition of chromophores. The presence of a (nitrophenyl)sulfenyl (NPS) chromophore bound to the Trp does not perturb the secondary structure of the toxin as shown by the analysis of the polypeptidic amide I vibrations; however, the environment of this Trp and the geometry of a disulfide bridge seem to be modified. The secondary structure is not affected by the presence of the NPS chromophore; therefore, the decrease in binding affinity observed after modification of Trp-29 by the reagent NPS-Cl [Faure et al. (1983) Biochemistry 22, 2068-2076] is due to an alteration of the environment of this aromatic amino acid and/or a steric hindrance and not to an overall modification of the toxin structure. The binding assays of [nitrotyrosyl]toxin show that after nitration the affinity toward the monoclonal antibody M alpha 1 is unchanged and that the affinity toward the cholinergic receptor (AcChR) from Torpedo marmorata remains high. We concluded that the structure of toxin alpha after adding the NO2 chromophore to Tyr-25 is the same as it is in native toxin.

Andre Menez

Papers

Structure and chemical modifications of neurotoxin from Naja nigricollis studied by Raman spectroscopy.