scholarly journals Structural Insights into Lactococcal Siphophage p2 Baseplate Activation Mechanism

Viruses ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 878
Author(s):  
Silvia Spinelli ◽  
Denise Tremblay ◽  
Sylvain Moineau ◽  
Christian Cambillau ◽  
Adeline Goulet

Virulent phages infecting L. lactis, an industry-relevant bacterium, pose a significant risk to the quality of the fermented milk products. Phages of the Skunavirus genus are by far the most isolated lactococcal phages in the cheese environments and phage p2 is the model siphophage for this viral genus. The baseplate of phage p2, which is used to recognize its host, was previously shown to display two conformations by X-ray crystallography, a rested state and an activated state ready to bind to the host. The baseplate became only activated and opened in the presence of Ca2+. However, such an activated state was not previously observed in the virion. Here, using nanobodies binding to the baseplate, we report on the negative staining electron microscopy structure of the activated form of the baseplate directly observed in the p2 virion, that is compatible with the activated baseplate crystal structure. Analyses of this new structure also established the presence of a second distal tail (Dit) hexamer as a component of the baseplate, the topology of which differs largely from the first one. We also observed an uncoupling between the baseplate activation and the tail tip protein (Tal) opening, suggesting an infection mechanism more complex than previously expected.

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 370 (6514) ◽  
pp. 360-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie M. Bester ◽  
Guochao Wei ◽  
Haiyan Zhao ◽  
Daniel Adu-Ampratwum ◽  
Naseer Iqbal ◽  
...  

The potent HIV-1 capsid inhibitor GS-6207 is an investigational principal component of long-acting antiretroviral therapy. We found that GS-6207 inhibits HIV-1 by stabilizing and thereby preventing functional disassembly of the capsid shell in infected cells. X-ray crystallography, cryo–electron microscopy, and hydrogen-deuterium exchange experiments revealed that GS-6207 tightly binds two adjoining capsid subunits and promotes distal intra- and inter-hexamer interactions that stabilize the curved capsid lattice. In addition, GS-6207 interferes with capsid binding to the cellular HIV-1 cofactors Nup153 and CPSF6 that mediate viral nuclear import and direct integration into gene-rich regions of chromatin. These findings elucidate structural insights into the multimodal, potent antiviral activity of GS-6207 and provide a means for rationally developing second-generation therapies.


2010 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Weik ◽  
Jacques-Philippe Colletier

X-ray crystallography provides structural details of biological macromolecules. Whereas routine data are collected close to 100 K in order to mitigate radiation damage, more exotic temperature-controlled experiments in a broader temperature range from 15 K to room temperature can provide both dynamical and structural insights. Here, the dynamical behaviour of crystalline macromolecules and their surrounding solvent as a function of cryo-temperature is reviewed. Experimental strategies of kinetic crystallography are discussed that have allowed the generation and trapping of macromolecular intermediate states by combining reaction initiation in the crystalline state with appropriate temperature profiles. A particular focus is on recruiting X-ray-induced changes for reaction initiation, thus unveiling useful aspects of radiation damage, which otherwise has to be minimized in macromolecular crystallography.


2014 ◽  
Vol 223 (1) ◽  
pp. T9-T23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Peelman ◽  
Lennart Zabeau ◽  
Kedar Moharana ◽  
Savvas N Savvides ◽  
Jan Tavernier

Leptin plays a central role in the control of body weight and energy homeostasis, but is a pleiotropic cytokine with activities on many peripheral cell types. In this review, we discuss the interaction of leptin with its receptor, and focus on the structural and mechanistic aspects of the extracellular aspects of leptin receptor (LR) activation. We provide an extensive overview of all structural information that has been obtained for leptin and its receptor via X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering, homology modeling, and mutagenesis studies. The available knowledge is integrated into putative models toward a recapitulation of the LR activation mechanism.


2014 ◽  
Vol 169 ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Stone ◽  
Ryan McGreevy ◽  
Barry Isralewitz ◽  
Klaus Schulten

Hybrid structure fitting methods combine data from cryo-electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography with molecular dynamics simulations for the determination of all-atom structures of large biomolecular complexes. Evaluating the quality-of-fit obtained from hybrid fitting is computationally demanding, particularly in the context of a multiplicity of structural conformations that must be evaluated. Existing tools for quality-of-fit analysis and visualization have previously targeted small structures and are too slow to be used interactively for large biomolecular complexes of particular interest today such as viruses or for long molecular dynamics trajectories as they arise in protein folding. We present new data-parallel and GPU-accelerated algorithms for rapid interactive computation of quality-of-fit metrics linking all-atom structures and molecular dynamics trajectories to experimentally-determined density maps obtained from cryo-electron microscopy or X-ray crystallography. We evaluate the performance and accuracy of the new quality-of-fit analysis algorithmsvis-à-visexisting tools, examine algorithm performance on GPU-accelerated desktop workstations and supercomputers, and describe new visualization techniques for results of hybrid structure fitting methods.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver S. Smart ◽  
Vladimír Horský ◽  
Swanand Gore ◽  
Radka Svobodová Vařeková ◽  
Veronika Bendová ◽  
...  

Realising the importance of assessing the quality of the biomolecular structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) partners established Validation Task Forces to obtain advice on the methods and standards to be used to validate structures determined by X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and three-dimensional electron cryo-microscopy. The resulting wwPDB validation pipeline is an integral part of the wwPDB OneDep deposition, biocuration and validation system. The wwPDB Validation Service webserver (https://validate.wwpdb.org) can be used to perform checks prior to deposition. Here, it is shown how validation metrics can be combined to produce an overall score that allows the ranking of macromolecular structures and domains in search results. The ValTrendsDBdatabase provides users with a convenient way to access and analyse validation information and other properties of X-ray crystal structures in the PDB, including investigating trends in and correlations between different structure properties and validation metrics.


2013 ◽  
Vol 457 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mandy Miertzschke ◽  
Carolin Koerner ◽  
Michael Spoerner ◽  
Alfred Wittinghofer

Using Arl13B from Chlamydomonas as a model, we show by high resolution X-ray crystallography and biochemical approaches that mutations in patients with Joubert syndrome might lead to loss of function by specifically affecting the stability of the active conformation of Arl13B.


2021 ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
Takashiro Akitsu ◽  
Yuika Onami ◽  
Tetsundo Furuya

A fire sometimes ignited an organic solvent in a chemical laboratory. A mechanochemical synthesis may be a good way to reduce the amount of organic solvents or without organic solvents compared to conventional synthesis in solutions. The solvent affected the product, namely solvent methanol acted as a ligand, although the quality of the data of X-ray crystallography is usually difficult to report in a strict research article in the case of our Azo-Schiff base metal complexes. Thus substitution of synthesis methods associated with potentially dangerous organic solvents may be possible depending on the application or purpose.


2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (12) ◽  
pp. 1184-1191
Author(s):  
Lum Wang ◽  
Holger Kruse ◽  
Oleg V. Sobolev ◽  
Nigel W. Moriarty ◽  
Mark P. Waller ◽  
...  

Electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) is rapidly becoming a major competitor to X-ray crystallography, especially for large structures that are difficult or impossible to crystallize. While recent spectacular technological improvements have led to significantly higher resolution three-dimensional reconstructions, the average quality of cryo-EM maps is still at the low-resolution end of the range compared with crystallography. A long-standing challenge for atomic model refinement has been the production of stereochemically meaningful models for this resolution regime. Here, it is demonstrated that including accurate model geometry restraints derived from ab initio quantum-chemical calculations (HF-D3/6-31G) can improve the refinement of an example structure (chain A of PDB entry 3j63). The robustness of the procedure is tested for additional structures with up to 7000 atoms (PDB entry 3a5x and chain C of PDB entry 5fn5) using the less expensive semi-empirical (GFN1-xTB) model. The necessary algorithms enabling real-space quantum refinement have been implemented in the latest version of qr.refine and are described here.


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