Chemical Synthesis of an Enzyme Containing an Artificial Catalytic Apparatus

With the goal of investigating electronic aspects of the catalysis of peptide bond hydrolysis, an analogue of HIV-1 protease was designed in which a non-peptide hydroxy-isoquinolinone artificial catalytic apparatus replaced the conserved Asp25–Thr26–Gly27 sequence in each 99-residue polypeptide chain of the homodimeric enzyme molecule. The enzyme analogue was prepared by total chemical synthesis and had detectable catalytic activity on known HIV-1 protease peptide substrates. Compared with uncatalyzed hydrolysis, the analogue enzyme increased the rate of peptide bond hydrolysis by ∼108-fold. Extensions of this unique approach to the study of enzyme catalysis in HIV-1 protease are discussed.

Biomimetic design: a programmed tetradecapeptide folds and auto-dimerizes as a stereochemically articulated receptor protein

Treating protein-structure evolution as a hierarchy of selections, a fourteen residue polypeptide was made as a C2 symmetric receptor structure in mimicry of HIV protease. This shows the value of a biomimetic algorithm and of stereochemistry as a variable in protein design.

Identification of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa glmM Gene, Encoding Phosphoglucosamine Mutase

ABSTRACT A search for a potential algC homologue within thePseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 genome database has revealed an open reading frame (ORF) of unknown function, ORF540 in contig 54 (July 1999 Pseudomonas genome release), that theoretically coded for a 445-amino-acid-residue polypeptide (I. M. Tavares, J. H. Leitão, A. M. Fialho, and I. Sá-Correia, Res. Microbiol. 150:105–116, 1999). The product of this gene is here identified as the phosphoglucosamine mutase (GlmM) which catalyzes the conversion of glucosamine-6-phosphate to glucosamine-1-phosphate, an essential step in the formation of the cell wall precursor UDP-N-acetylglucosamine. The P. aeruginosa gene has been cloned into expression vectors and shown to restore normal peptidoglycan biosynthesis and cell growth of a glmM Escherichia coli mutant strain. The GlmM enzyme from P. aeruginosa has been overproduced to high levels and purified to homogeneity in a six-histidine-tagged form. Beside its phosphoglucosamine mutase activity, the P. aeruginosaenzyme is shown to exhibit phosphomannomutase and phosphoglucomutase activities, which represent about 20 and 2% of its GlmM activity, respectively.

Identification of the Repressor-Encoding Gene of the Lactobacillus Bacteriophage A2

ABSTRACT The repressor gene of the Lactobacillus phage A2 has the following properties: it (i) encodes a 224-residue polypeptide with DNA binding and RecA cleavage motifs, (ii) is expressed in lysogenic cultures, and (iii) confers superinfection immunity on the host. Adjacent, but divergently transcribed, lies another open reading frame whose product resembles the λ Cro protein. In the 161-bp intergenic segment, putative promoters and operators have been detected.