XFEL Microcrystallography of Self-Assembling Silver n-Alkanethiolates.

New synthetic hybrid materials and their increasing complexity have placed growing demands on crystal growth for single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. Unfortunately, not all chemical systems are conducive to the isolation of single crystals for traditional characterization. Here, small-molecule serial femtosecond crystallography (smSFX) at atomic resolution (0.833 Å) is employed to characterize microcrystalline silver n-alkanethiolates with various alkyl chain lengths at X-ray free electron laser facilities, resolving long-standing controversies regarding the atomic connectivity and odd-even effects of layer stacking. smSFX provides high-quality crystal structures directly from the powder of the true unknowns, a capability that is particularly useful for systems having notoriously small or defective crystals. We present crystal structures of silver n-butanethiolate (C4), silver n-hexanethiolate (C6), and silver n-nonanethiolate (C9). We show that an odd-even effect originates from the orientation of the terminal methyl group and its role in packing efficiency. We also propose a secondary odd-even effect involving multiple mosaic blocks in the crystals containing even-numbered chains, identified by selected-area electron diffraction measurements. We conclude with a discussion of the merits of the synthetic preparation for the preparation of microdiffraction specimens and compare the long-range order in these crystals to that of self-assembled monolayers.

Co-flow injection for serial crystallography at X-ray free-electron lasers.

Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) is a powerful technique that exploits X-ray free-electron lasers to determine the structure of macro-molecules at room temperature. Despite the impressive exposition of structural details with this novel crystallographic approach, the methods currently available to introduce crystals into the path of the X-ray beam sometimes exhibit serious drawbacks. Samples requiring liquid injection of crystal slurries consume large quantities of crystals (at times up to a gram of protein per data set), may not be compatible with vacuum configurations on beamlines or provide a high background due to additional sheathing liquids present during the injection. Proposed and characterized here is the use of an immiscible inert oil phase to supplement the flow of sample in a hybrid microfluidic 3D-printed co-flow device. Co-flow generation is reported with sample and oil phases flowing in parallel, resulting in stable injection conditions for two different resin materials experimentally. A numerical model is presented that adequately predicts these flow-rate conditions. The co-flow generating devices reduce crystal clogging effects, have the potential to conserve protein crystal samples up to 95% and will allow degradation-free light-induced time-resolved SFX.

Triangular in Vivo Self-Assembling Coiled-Coil Protein Origami.

Coiled-coil protein origami (CCPO) polyhedra are designed self-assembling nanostructures constructed from coiled coil (CC)-forming modules connected into a single chain. For testing new CCPO building modules, simpler polyhedra could be used that should maintain most features relevant to larger scaffolds. We show the design and characterization of nanoscale single-chain triangles, composed of six concatenated parallel CC dimer-forming segments connected by flexible linker peptides. The polypeptides self-assembled in bacteria in agreement with the design, and the shape of the polypeptides was confirmed with small-angle X-ray scattering. Fusion with split-fluorescent protein domains was used as a functional assay in bacteria, based on the discrimination between the correctly folded and misfolded nanoscale triangles comprising correct, mismatched, or truncated modules. This strategy was used to evaluate the optimal size of linkers between CC segments which comprised eight amino acid residues.

E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase TRIM21-mediated lysine capture by UBE2E1 reveals substrate-targeting mode of a ubiquitin-conjugating E2.

The E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase TRIM21, of the RING-containing tripartite motif (TRIM) protein family, is a major autoantigen in autoimmune diseases and a modulator of innate immune signaling. Together with ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme E2 E1 (UBE2E1), TRIM21 acts both as an E3 ligase and as a substrate in autoubiquitination. We here report a 2.82-Å crystal structure of the human TRIM21 RING domain in complex with the human E2-conjugating UBE2E1 enzyme, in which a ubiquitin-targeted TRIM21 substrate lysine was captured in the UBE2E1 active site. The structure revealed that the direction of lysine entry is similar to that described for human proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), a small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO)-targeted substrate, and thus differs from the canonical SUMO-targeted substrate entry. In agreement, we found that critical UBE2E1 residues involved in the capture of the TRIM21 substrate lysine are conserved in ubiquitin-conjugating E2s, whereas residues critical for SUMOylation are not conserved. We noted that coordination of the acceptor lysine leads to remodeling of amino acid side-chain interactions between the UBE2E1 active site and the E2-E3 direct interface, including the so-called "linchpin" residue conserved in RING E3s and required for ubiquitination. The findings of our work support the notion that substrate lysine activation of an E2-E3-connecting allosteric path may trigger catalytic activity and contribute to the understanding of specific lysine targeting by ubiquitin-conjugating E2s.

Online Size-exclusion and Ion-exchange Chromatography on a SAXS Beamline.

Biological small angle X-ray scattering (BioSAXS) is a powerful technique in molecular and structural biology used to determine solution structure, particle size and shape, and surface-to-volume ratio of macromolecules. The technique is applicable to a very wide variety of solution conditions spanning a broad range of concentrations, pH values, ionic strengths, temperatures, additives, etc., but the sample is required to be monodisperse. This caveat led to the implementation of liquid chromatography systems on SAXS beamlines. Here, we describe the upstream integration of size-exclusion (SEC) and ion-exchange chromatography (IEC) on a beamline, different methods for optimal background subtraction, and data reduction. As an example, we describe how we use SEC- and IEC-SAXS on a fragment of the essential vaccinia virus protein D5, consisting of a D5N helicase domain. We determine its overall shape and molecular weight, showing the hexameric structure of the protein.

Noncovalent PEGylation via Lectin-Glycopolymer Interactions.

PEGylation, the covalent modification of proteins with polyethylene glycol, is an abundantly used technique to improve the pharmacokinetics of therapeutic proteins. The drawback with this methodology is that the covalently attached PEG can impede the biological activity (e.g., reduced receptor-binding capacity). Protein therapeutics with "disposable" PEG modifiers have potential advantages over the current technology. Here, we show that a protein-polymer "Medusa complex" is formed by the combination of a hexavalent lectin with a glycopolymer. Using NMR spectroscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), size exclusion chromatography, and native gel electrophoresis it was demonstrated that the fucose-binding lectin RSL and a fucose-capped polyethylene glycol (Fuc-PEG) form a multimeric assembly. All of the experimental methods provided evidence of noncovalent PEGylation with a concomitant increase in molecular mass and hydrodynamic radius. The affinity of the protein-polymer complex was determined by ITC and competition experiments to be in the micromolar range, suggesting that such systems have potential biomedical applications.

Structural and Functional Highlights of Vacuolar Soluble Protein 1 from Pathogen Trypanosoma brucei brucei.

Trypanosoma brucei (T. brucei) is responsible for the fatal human disease called African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness. The causative parasite, Trypanosoma, encodes soluble versions of inorganic pyrophosphatases (PPase), also called vacuolar soluble proteins (VSPs), which are localized to its acidocalcisomes. The latter are acidic membrane-enclosed organelles rich in polyphosphate chains and divalent cations whose significance in these parasites remains unclear. We here report the crystal structure of T. brucei brucei acidocalcisomal PPases in a ternary complex with Mg(2+) and imidodiphosphate. The crystal structure reveals a novel structural architecture distinct from known class I PPases in its tetrameric oligomeric state in which a fused EF hand domain arranges around the catalytic PPase domain. This unprecedented assembly evident from TbbVSP1 crystal structure is further confirmed by SAXS and TEM data. SAXS data suggest structural flexibility in EF hand domains indicative of conformational plasticity within TbbVSP1.

The pentameric nucleoplasmin fold is present in Drosophila FKBP39 and a large number of chromatin-related proteins.

Nucleoplasmin is a histone chaperone that consists of a pentameric N-terminal domain and an unstructured C-terminal tail. The pentameric core domain, a doughnut-like structure with a central pore, is only found in the nucleoplasmin family. Here, we report the first structure of a nucleoplasmin-like domain (NPL) from the unrelated Drosophila protein, FKBP39, and we present evidence that this protein associates with chromatin. Furthermore, we show that two other chromatin proteins, Arabidopsis thaliana histone deacetylase type 2 (HD2) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae Fpr4, share the NPL fold and form pentamers, or a dimer of pentamers in the case of HD2. Thus, we propose a new family of proteins that share the pentameric nucleoplasmin-like NPL domain and are found in protists, fungi, plants and animals.

Small angle scatter imaging from wide beam diffraction patterns.

In this paper we report on the extension of the technique of mapping small angle x-ray scatter (SAXS) across a soft material specimen several millimetres square. In the conventional SAXS mapping technique a pencil beam of x-rays is raster scanned over the specimen with the scatter pattern recorded from each point in the raster. In our technique a wide, parallel beam is used, speeding up the data collection time considerably. An image processing algorithm is used to separate the scatter pattern features from individual points along the line of the beam. To test the efficacy of the technique a phantom was constructed using gelatin and rat tail tendon collagen. Collagen fibres in the phantom were arranged in quarters horizontally, diagonally and vertically leaving one quarter with just gelatin. The phantom was used to collect both raster scanned sets of SAXS patterns spaced at 0.25 mm horizontally and vertically and also a wide beam data set. The width of the beam in this case was approximately 7 mm. Using the third-order diffraction of rat tail tendon intensity data were gathered from each SAXS pattern and used to construct a map. Data from the raster scan image and that from the wide beam are compared. Finally using a phantom made from dehydrated rat tail tendon and paraffin wax a tomographic slice constructed using data from SAXS patterns is shown.