scholarly journals The metabolism of neuropeptides. The hydrolysis of peptides, including enkephalins, tachykinins and their analogues, by endopeptidase-24.11

1984 ◽  
Vol 223 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
R Matsas ◽  
A J Kenny ◽  
A J Turner

Endopeptidase-24.11 (EC 3.4.24.11), purified to homogeneity from pig kidney, was shown to hydrolyse a wide range of neuropeptides, including enkephalins, tachykinins, bradykinin, neurotensin, luliberin and cholecystokinin. The sites of hydrolysis of peptides were identified, indicating that the primary specificity is consistent with hydrolysis occurring at bonds involving the amino group of hydrophobic amino acid residues. Of the substrates tested, the amidated peptide substance P is hydrolysed the most efficiently (Km = 31.9 microM; kcat. = 5062 min-1). A free alpha-carboxy group at the C-terminus of a peptide substrate is therefore not essential for efficient hydrolysis by the endopeptidase. A large variation in kcat./Km values was observed among the peptide substrates studied, a finding that reflects a significant influence of amino acid residues, remote from the scissile bond, on the efficiency of hydrolysis. These subsite interactions between peptide substrate and enzyme thus confer some degree of functional specificity on the endopeptidase. The inhibition of endopeptidase-24.11 by several compounds was compared with that of pig kidney peptidyldipeptidase A (EC 3.4.15.1). Of the inhibitors examined, only N-[1(R,S)-carboxy-2-phenylethyl]-Phe-p-aminobenzoate inhibited endopeptidase-24.11 but not peptidyldipeptidase. Captopril (D-3-mercapto-2-methylpropanoyl-L-proline), Teprotide (pGlu-Trp-Pro-Arg-Pro-Gln-Ile-Pro-Pro) and MK422 [N-[(S)-1-carboxy-3-phenylpropyl]-L-Ala-L-Pro] were highly selective as inhibitors of peptidyldipeptidase. Although not wholly specific, phosphoramidon was a more potent inhibitor of endopeptidase-24.11 than were any of the synthetic compounds tested.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sai Pooja Mahajan ◽  
Yashes Srinivasan ◽  
Jason W. Labonte ◽  
Matthew P. DeLisa ◽  
Jeffrey J. Gray

AbstractThe polypeptide N-acetylgalactosaminyl transferase (GalNAc-T) enzyme family initiates O-linked mucin-type glycosylation. The family constitutes 20 isozymes in humans—an unusually large number—unique to O-glycosylation. GalNAc-Ts exhibit both redundancy and finely tuned specificity for a wide range of peptide substrates. In this work, we deciphered the sequence and structural motifs that determine the peptide substrate preferences for the GalNAc-T2 isoform. Our approach involved sampling and characterization of peptide–enzyme conformations obtained from Rosetta Monte Carlo-minimization–based flexible docking. We computationally scanned 19 amino acid residues at positions −1 and +1 of an eight-residue peptide substrate, which comprised a dataset of 361 (19×19) peptides with previously characterized experimental GalNAc-T2 glycosylation efficiencies. The calculations recapitulated experimental specificity data, successfully discriminating between glycosylatable and non-glycosylatable peptides with a probability of 96.5% (ROC-AUC score), a balanced accuracy of 85.5% and a false positive rate of 7.3%. The glycosylatable peptide substrates viz. peptides with proline, serine, threonine, and alanine at the −1 position of the peptide preferentially exhibited cognate sequon-like conformations. The preference for specific residues at the −1 position of the peptide was regulated by enzyme residues R362, K363, Q364, H365 and W331, which modulate the pocket size and specific enzyme-peptide interactions. For the +1 position of the peptide, enzyme residues K281 and K363 formed gating interactions with aromatics and glutamines at the +1 position of the peptide, leading to modes of peptide-binding sub-optimal for catalysis. Overall, our work revealed enzyme features that lead to the finely tuned specificity observed for a broad range of peptide substrates for the GalNAc-T2 enzyme. We anticipate that the key sequence and structural motifs can be extended to analyze specificities of other isoforms of the GalNAc-T family and can be used to guide design of variants with tailored specificity.


1988 ◽  
Vol 251 (3) ◽  
pp. 691-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
R W Olafson ◽  
W D McCubbin ◽  
C M Kay

Biochemical and physiological studies of Synechococcus cyanobacteria have indicated the presence of a low-Mr heavy-metal-binding protein with marked similarity to eukaryotic metallothioneins (MTs). We report here the characterization of a Synechococcus prokaryotic MT isolated by gel-permeation and reverse-phase chromatography. The large number of variants of this molecule found during chromatographic separation could not be attributed to the presence of major isoproteins as assessed by amino acid analysis and amino acid sequencing of isoforms. Two of the latter were shown to have identical primary structures that differed substantially from the well-described eukaryotic MTs. In addition to six long-chain aliphatic residues, two aromatic residues were found adjacent to one another near the centre of the molecule, making this the most hydrophobic MT to be described. Other unusual features included a pair of histidine residues located in repeating Gly-His-Thr-Gly sequences near the C-terminus and a complete lack of association of hydroxylated residues with cysteine residues, as is commonly found in eukaryotes. Similarly, aside from a single lysine residue, no basic amino acid residues were found adjacent to cysteine residues in the sequence. Most importantly, sequence alignment analyses with mammalian, invertebrate and fungal MT sequences showed no statistically significant homology aside from the presence of Cys-Xaa-Cys structures common to all MTs. On the other hand, like other MTs, the prokaryotic molecule appears to be free of alpha-helical structure but has a considerable amount of beta-structure, as predicted by both c.d. measurements and the Chou & Fasman empirical relations. Considered together, these data suggested that some similarity between the metal-thiolate clusters of the prokaryote and eukaryote MTs may exist.


Cells ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 715
Author(s):  
Tamara Tomanić ◽  
Claire Martin ◽  
Holly Stefen ◽  
Esmeralda Parić ◽  
Peter Gunning ◽  
...  

Tropomyosins (Tpms) have been described as master regulators of actin, with Tpm3 products shown to be involved in early developmental processes, and the Tpm3 isoform Tpm3.1 controlling changes in the size of neuronal growth cones and neurite growth. Here, we used primary mouse hippocampal neurons of C57/Bl6 wild type and Bl6Tpm3flox transgenic mice to carry out morphometric analyses in response to the absence of Tpm3 products, as well as to investigate the effect of C-terminal truncation on the ability of Tpm3.1 to modulate neuronal morphogenesis. We found that the knock-out of Tpm3 leads to decreased neurite length and complexity, and that the deletion of two amino acid residues at the C-terminus of Tpm3.1 leads to more detrimental changes in neurite morphology than the deletion of six amino acid residues. We also found that Tpm3.1 that lacks the 6 C-terminal amino acid residues does not associate with stress fibres, does not segregate to the tips of neurites, and does not impact the amount of the filamentous actin pool at the axonal growth cones, as opposed to Tpm3.1, which lacks the two C-terminal amino acid residues. Our study provides further insight into the role of both Tpm3 products and the C-terminus of Tpm3.1, and it forms the basis for future studies that aim to identify the molecular mechanisms underlying Tpm3.1 targeting to different subcellular compartments.


2004 ◽  
Vol 186 (15) ◽  
pp. 4885-4893 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takane Katayama ◽  
Akiko Sakuma ◽  
Takatoshi Kimura ◽  
Yutaka Makimura ◽  
Jun Hiratake ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT A genomic library of Bifidobacterium bifidum constructed in Escherichia coli was screened for the ability to hydrolyze the α-(1→2) linkage of 2′-fucosyllactose, and a gene encoding 1,2-α-l-fucosidase (AfcA) was isolated. The afcA gene was found to comprise 1,959 amino acid residues with a predicted molecular mass of 205 kDa and containing a signal peptide and a membrane anchor at the N and C termini, respectively. A domain responsible for fucosidase activity (the Fuc domain; amino acid residues 577 to 1474) was localized by deletion analysis and then purified as a hexahistidine-tagged protein. The recombinant Fuc domain specifically hydrolyzed the terminal α-(1→2)-fucosidic linkages of various oligosaccharides and a sugar chain of a glycoprotein. The stereochemical course of the hydrolysis of 2′-fucosyllactose was determined to be inversion by using 1H nuclear magnetic resonance. The primary structure of the Fuc domain exhibited no similarity to those of any glycoside hydrolases (GHs) but showed high similarity to those of several hypothetical proteins in a database. Thus, it was revealed that the AfcA protein constitutes a novel inverting GH family (GH family 95).


2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.S. Skvortsov ◽  
N.N. Alekseychuk ◽  
D.V. Khudyakov ◽  
I.V. Romero Reyes

The data on approximate values of isoelectric point (pI) of peptides obtained during their fractionation by isoelectric focusing can be successfully used for the calculation of the pKa’s scale for amino acid residues. This scale can be used for pI prediction. The data of peptide fractionation also provides information about various posttranslational modifications (PTM), so that the prediction of pI may be performed for a wide range of protein forms. In this study, pKa values were calculated using a set of 13448 peptides (including 300 peptides with PTMs significant for pI calculation). The pKa constants were calculated for N-terminal, internal and C-terminal amino acid residues separately. The comparative analysis has shown that our scale increases the accuracy of pI prediction for peptides and proteins and successfully competes with traditional scales and such methods as support vector machines and artificial neural networks. The prediction performed by this scale, can be made in our program pIPredict with GUI written in JAVA as executable jar-archive. The program is freely available for academic users at http://www.ibmc.msk.ru/LPCIT/pIPredict. The software has also the possibility of pI predicting by some other scales; it recognizes some PTM and has the ability to use a custom scale.


1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-91
Author(s):  
S Miyazawa ◽  
T Osumi ◽  
T Hashimoto ◽  
K Ohno ◽  
S Miura ◽  
...  

To identify the topogenic signal of peroxisomal acyl-coenzyme A oxidase (AOX) of rat liver, we carried out in vitro import experiments with mutant polypeptides of the enzyme. Full-length AOX and polypeptides that were truncated at the N-terminal region were efficiently imported into peroxisomes, as determined by resistance to externally added proteinase K. Polypeptides carrying internal deletions in the C-terminal region exhibited much lower import activities. Polypeptides that were truncated or mutated at the extreme C terminus were totally import negative. When the five amino acid residues at the extreme C terminus were attached to some of the import-negative polypeptides, the import activities were rescued. Moreover, the C-terminal 199 and 70 amino acid residues of AOX directed fusion proteins with two bacterial enzymes to peroxisomes. These results are interpreted to mean that the peroxisome targeting signal of AOX residues at the C terminus and the five or fewer residues at the extreme terminus have an obligatory function in targeting. The C-terminal internal region also has an important role for efficient import, possibly through a conformational effect.


1985 ◽  
Vol 231 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
N M Hooper ◽  
A J Kenny ◽  
A J Turner

Both endopeptidase-24.11 and peptidyl dipeptidase A have previously been shown to hydrolyse the neuropeptide substance P. The structurally related peptide neurokinin A is also shown to be hydrolysed by pig kidney endopeptidase-24.11. The identified products indicated hydrolysis at two sites, Ser5-Phe6 and Gly8-Leu9, consistent with the known specificity of the enzyme. The pattern of hydrolysis of neurokinin A by synaptic membranes prepared from pig striatum was similar to that observed with purified endopeptidase-24.11, and hydrolysis was substantially abolished by the selective inhibitor phosphoramidon. Peptidyl dipeptidase A purified from pig kidney was shown to hydrolyse substance P but not neurokinin A. It is concluded that endopeptidase-24.11 has the general capacity to hydrolyse and inactivate the family of tachykinin peptides, including substance P and neurokinin A.


1998 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 486-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong-Won Choo ◽  
Tatsuo Kurihara ◽  
Takeshi Suzuki ◽  
Kenji Soda ◽  
Nobuyoshi Esaki

ABSTRACT A psychrotrophic bacterium producing a cold-adapted lipase upon growth at low temperatures was isolated from Alaskan soil and identified as a Pseudomonas strain. The lipase gene (lipP) was cloned from the strain and sequenced. The amino acid sequence deduced from the nucleotide sequence of the gene (924 bp) corresponded to a protein of 308 amino acid residues with a molecular weight of 33,714. LipP also has consensus motifs conserved in other cold-adapted lipases, i.e., Lipase 2 from AntarcticMoraxella TA144 (G. Feller, M. Thiry, J. L. Arpigny, and C. Gerday, DNA Cell Biol. 10:381–388, 1991) and the mammalian hormone-sensitive lipase (D. Langin, H. Laurell, L. S. Holst, P. Belfrage, and C. Holm, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 90:4897–4901, 1993): a pentapeptide, GDSAG, containing the putative active-site serine and an HG dipeptide. LipP was purified from an extract of recombinantEscherichia coli C600 cells harboring a plasmid coding for the lipP gene. The enzyme showed a 1,3-positional specificity toward triolein. p-Nitrophenyl esters of fatty acids with short to medium chains (C4 and C6) served as good substrates. The enzyme was stable between pH 6 and 9, and the optimal pH for the enzymatic hydrolysis of tributyrin was around 8. The activation energies for the hydrolysis ofp-nitrophenyl butyrate and p-nitrophenyl laurate were determined to be 11.2 and 7.7 kcal/mol, respectively, in the temperature range 5 to 35°C. The enzyme was unstable at temperatures higher than 45°C. The Km of the enzyme for p-nitrophenyl butyrate increased with increases in the assay temperature. The enzyme was strongly inhibited by Zn2+, Cu2+, Fe3+, and Hg2+ but was not affected by phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride and bis-nitrophenyl phosphate. Various water-miscible organic solvents, such as methanol and dimethyl sulfoxide, at concentrations of 0 to 30% (vol/vol) activated the enzyme.


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