scholarly journals Controlling and Fine Tuning the Physical Properties of Two Identical Metal Coordination Sites in De Novo Designed Three Stranded Coiled Coil Peptides

2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Iranzo ◽  
Saumen Chakraborty ◽  
Lars Hemmingsen ◽  
Vincent L. Pecoraro
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1290
Author(s):  
Natalia Alvarez-Santullano ◽  
Pamela Villegas ◽  
Mario Sepúlveda Mardones ◽  
Roberto E. Durán ◽  
Raúl Donoso ◽  
...  

Burkholderia sensu lato (s.l.) species have a versatile metabolism. The aims of this review are the genomic reconstruction of the metabolic pathways involved in the synthesis of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) by Burkholderia s.l. genera, and the characterization of the PHA synthases and the pha genes organization. The reports of the PHA synthesis from different substrates by Burkholderia s.l. strains were reviewed. Genome-guided metabolic reconstruction involving the conversion of sugars and fatty acids into PHAs by 37 Burkholderia s.l. species was performed. Sugars are metabolized via the Entner–Doudoroff (ED), pentose-phosphate (PP), and lower Embden–Meyerhoff–Parnas (EMP) pathways, which produce reducing power through NAD(P)H synthesis and PHA precursors. Fatty acid substrates are metabolized via β-oxidation and de novo synthesis of fatty acids into PHAs. The analysis of 194 Burkholderia s.l. genomes revealed that all strains have the phaC, phaA, and phaB genes for PHA synthesis, wherein the phaC gene is generally present in ≥2 copies. PHA synthases were classified into four phylogenetic groups belonging to class I II and III PHA synthases and one outlier group. The reconstruction of PHAs synthesis revealed a high level of gene redundancy probably reflecting complex regulatory layers that provide fine tuning according to diverse substrates and physiological conditions.


Author(s):  
Thomas Blaschke ◽  
Jürgen Bajorath

AbstractExploring the origin of multi-target activity of small molecules and designing new multi-target compounds are highly topical issues in pharmaceutical research. We have investigated the ability of a generative neural network to create multi-target compounds. Data sets of experimentally confirmed multi-target, single-target, and consistently inactive compounds were extracted from public screening data considering positive and negative assay results. These data sets were used to fine-tune the REINVENT generative model via transfer learning to systematically recognize multi-target compounds, distinguish them from single-target or inactive compounds, and construct new multi-target compounds. During fine-tuning, the model showed a clear tendency to increasingly generate multi-target compounds and structural analogs. Our findings indicate that generative models can be adopted for de novo multi-target compound design.


2002 ◽  
Vol 137 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 65-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Meier ◽  
Ariel Lustig ◽  
Ueli Aebi ◽  
Peter Burkhard
Keyword(s):  
De Novo ◽  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongyu Xue ◽  
Han Zhang ◽  
Dongling Xiao ◽  
Yukang Gong ◽  
Guohui Chuai ◽  
...  

AbstractIn silico modelling and analysis of small molecules substantially accelerates the process of drug development. Representing and understanding molecules is the fundamental step for various in silico molecular analysis tasks. Traditionally, these molecular analysis tasks have been investigated individually and separately. In this study, we presented X-MOL, which applies large-scale pre-training technology on 1.1 billion molecules for molecular understanding and representation, and then, carefully designed fine-tuning was performed to accommodate diverse downstream molecular analysis tasks, including molecular property prediction, chemical reaction analysis, drug-drug interaction prediction, de novo generation of molecules and molecule optimization. As a result, X-MOL was proven to achieve state-of-the-art results on all these molecular analysis tasks with good model interpretation ability. Collectively, taking advantage of super large-scale pre-training data and super-computing power, our study practically demonstrated the utility of the idea of “mass makes miracles” in molecular representation learning and downstream in silico molecular analysis, indicating the great potential of using large-scale unlabelled data with carefully designed pre-training and fine-tuning strategies to unify existing molecular analysis tasks and substantially enhance the performance of each task.


Viruses ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Angelo Pavesi ◽  
Fabio Romerio

Gene overprinting occurs when point mutations within a genomic region with an existing coding sequence create a new one in another reading frame. This process is quite frequent in viral genomes either to maximize the amount of information that they encode or in response to strong selective pressure. The most frequent scenario involves two different reading frames in the same DNA strand (sense overlap). Much less frequent are cases of overlapping genes that are encoded on opposite DNA strands (antisense overlap). One such example is the antisense ORF, asp in the minus strand of the HIV-1 genome overlapping the env gene. The asp gene is highly conserved in pandemic HIV-1 strains of group M, and it is absent in non-pandemic HIV-1 groups, HIV-2, and lentiviruses infecting non-human primates, suggesting that the ~190-amino acid protein that is expressed from this gene (ASP) may play a role in virus spread. While the function of ASP in the virus life cycle remains to be elucidated, mounting evidence from several research groups indicates that ASP is expressed in vivo. There are two alternative hypotheses that could be envisioned to explain the origin of the asp ORF. On one hand, asp may have originally been present in the ancestor of contemporary lentiviruses, and subsequently lost in all descendants except for most HIV-1 strains of group M due to selective advantage. Alternatively, the asp ORF may have originated very recently with the emergence of group M HIV-1 strains from SIVcpz. Here, we used a combination of computational and statistical approaches to study the genomic region of env in primate lentiviruses to shed light on the origin, structure, and sequence evolution of the asp ORF. The results emerging from our studies support the hypothesis of a recent de novo addition of the antisense ORF to the HIV-1 genome through a process that entailed progressive removal of existing internal stop codons from SIV strains to HIV-1 strains of group M, and fine tuning of the codon sequence in env that reduced the chances of new stop codons occurring in asp. Altogether, the study supports the notion that the HIV-1 asp gene encodes an accessory protein, providing a selective advantage to the virus.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao-Pei Liu ◽  
Wenxing Jin ◽  
Jie Hu ◽  
Mingzhu Wang ◽  
Jingjing Chen ◽  
...  

Chromosomal duplication requires de novo assembly of nucleosomes from newly synthesized histones, and the process involves a dynamic network of interactions between histones and histone chaperones. sNASP and ASF1 are two major histone H3–H4 chaperones found in distinct and common complexes, yet how sNASP binds H3–H4 in the presence and absence of ASF1 remains unclear. Here we show that, in the presence of ASF1, sNASP principally recognizes a partially unfolded Nα region of histone H3, and in the absence of ASF1, an additional sNASP binding site becomes available in the core domain of the H3–H4 complex. Our study also implicates a critical role of the C-terminal tail of H4 in the transfer of H3–H4 between sNASP and ASF1 and the coiled-coil domain of sNASP in nucleosome assembly. These findings provide mechanistic insights into coordinated histone binding and transfer by histone chaperones.


Blood ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 34-35
Author(s):  
Julia Skokowa ◽  
Mohammad Elgamacy ◽  
Patrick Müller

Protein therapeutics are clinically developed and used as minorly engineered forms of their natural templates. This direct adoption of natural proteins in therapeutic contexts very frequently faces major challenges, including instability, poor solubility, and aggregation, which may result in undesired clinical outcomes. In contrast to classical protein engineering techniques, de novo protein design enables the introduction of radical sequence and structure manipulations, which can be used to address these challenges. In this work, we test the utility of two different design strategies to design novel granulopoietic proteins, using structural information from human granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (hG-CSF) as a template. The two strategies are: (1) An epitope rescaffolding where we migrate a tertiary structural epitope to simpler, idealised, proteins scaffolds (Fig. 1A-C), and (2) a topological refactoring strategy, where we change the protein fold by rearranging connections across the secondary structures and optimised the designed sequence of the new fold (Fig. 1A,D,E). Testing only eight designs, we obtained novel granulopoietic proteins that bind to the G-CSF receptor, have nanomolar activity in cell-based assays, and were highly thermostable and protease-resistant. NMR structure determination showed three designs to match their designed coordinates within less than 2.5 Å. While the designs possessed starkly different sequence and structure from the native G-CSF, they showed very specific activity in differentiating primary human haematopoietic stem cells into fully mature granulocytes. Morever, one design shows significant and specific activity in vivo in zebrafish and mice. These results are prospectively directing us to investigate the role of dimerisation geometry of G-GCSF receptor on activation magnitude and downstream signalling pathways. More broadly, the results also motivate our ongoing work on to design other heamatopoietic agents. In conclusion, our findings highlight the utility of computational protein design as a highly effective and guided means for discovering nover receptor modulators, and to obtain new mechanistic information about the target molecule. Figure 1. Two different strategies to generate superfolding G-CSF designs. (A) X-ray structure of G-CSF (orange) bound to its cognate receptor (red) through its binding epitope (blue). According to the epitope rescaffolding strategy, (B) the critical binding epitope residues were disembodied and used as a geometric search query against the entire Protein Data Bank (PDB) to retrieve structurally compatible scaffolds. The top six compatible scaffolds structures are shown in cartoon representation. (C) The top two templates chosen for sequence design, were a de novo designed coiled-coil and a four-helix bundle with unknown function. The binding epitopes were grafted, and the scaffolds were optimised to rigidly host the guest epitope. (D-E) According to the topological refactoring strategy (D) the topology of the native G-CSF was rewired from around the fixed binding epitope, and then was further mutated to idealise the core residues (blue volume (E)) and residues distal from the binding epitope (orange crust (E)). Both strategies aimed at simplifying the topology, reducing the size, and rigidifying the bound epitope conformation through alternate means. Figure 1 Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1332-1347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xi-you Li ◽  
Jens Illigen ◽  
Martin Nieger ◽  
Steffen Michel ◽  
Christoph A. Schalley

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (46) ◽  
pp. 31055-31060 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emiliana De Santis ◽  
Valeria Castelletto ◽  
Maxim G. Ryadnov

A de novo self-assembly topology for engineering protein nanostructures under morphological control is reported.


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