Neutralizing the detrimental effect of glutathione on precious metal catalysts.

We report our efforts to enable transition-metal catalysis in the presence of cellular debris, notably Escherichia coli cell free extracts and cell lysates. This challenging goal is hampered by the presence of thiols, mainly present in the form of glutathione (GSH), which poison precious metal catalysts. To overcome this, we evaluated a selection of oxidizing agents and electrophiles toward their potential to neutralize the detrimental effect of GSH on a Ir-based transfer hydrogenation catalyst. While the bare catalyst was severely inhibited by cellular debris, embedding the organometallic moiety within a host protein led to promising results in the presence of some neutralizing agents. In view of its complementary to natural enzymes, the asymmetric imine reductase based on the incorporation of a biotinylated iridium pianostool complex within streptavidin (Sav) isoforms was selected as a model reaction. Compared to purified protein samples, we show that pretreatment of cell free extracts and cell lysates containing Sav mutants with diamide affords up to >100 TON's and only a modest erosion of enantioselectivity.

High-level secretion of recombinant full-length streptavidin in Pichia pastoris and its application to enantioselective catalysis.

Artificial metalloenzymes result from the incorporation of a catalytically competent biotinylated organometallic moiety into full-length (i.e. mature) streptavidin. With large-scale industrial biotechnology applications in mind, large quantities of recombinant streptavidin are required. Herein we report our efforts to produce wild-type mature and biotin-free streptavidin using the yeast Pichia pastoris expression system. The streptavidin gene was inserted into the expression vector pPICZαA in frame with the Saccharomyces cerevisiae α-mating factor secretion signal. In a fed-batch fermentation using a minimal medium supplemented with trace amounts of biotin, functional streptavidin was secreted at approximately 650mg/L of culture supernatant. This yield is approximately threefold higher than that from Escherichia coli, and although the overall expression process takes longer (ten days vs. two days), the downstream processing is simplified by eliminating denaturing/refolding steps. The purified streptavidin bound ∼3.2molecules of biotin per tetramer. Upon incorporation of a biotinylated piano-stool catalyst, the secreted streptavidin displayed identical properties to streptavidin produced in E. coli by showing activity as artificial imine reductase.

A dual anchoring strategy for the localization and activation of artificial metalloenzymes based on the biotin-streptavidin technology.

Artificial metalloenzymes result from anchoring an active catalyst within a protein environment. Toward this goal, various localization strategies have been pursued: covalent, supramolecular, or dative anchoring. Herein we show that introduction of a suitably positioned histidine residue contributes to firmly anchor, via a dative bond, a biotinylated rhodium piano stool complex within streptavidin. The in silico design of the artificial metalloenzyme was confirmed by X-ray crystallography. The resulting artificial metalloenzyme displays significantly improved catalytic performance, both in terms of activity and selectivity in the transfer hydrogenation of imines. Depending on the position of the histidine residue, both enantiomers of the salsolidine product can be obtained.

Localization of ligands within human carbonic anhydrase II using 19F pseudocontact shift analysis.

Unraveling the native structure of protein-ligand complexes in solution enables rational drug design. We report here the use of 19F pseudocontact shift (PCS) NMR as a method to determine fluorine positions of high affinity ligands bound within the drug target human carbonic anhydrase II with high accuracy. Three different ligands were localized within the protein by analysis of the obtained PCS from simple one-dimensional 19F spectra with an accuracy of up to 0.8 Å. In order to validate the PCS, four to five independent magnetic susceptibility tensors induced by lanthanide chelating tags bound site-specifically to single cysteine mutants were refined. Least-squares minimization and a Monte-Carlo approach allowed the assessment of experimental errors on the intersection of the corresponding four to five PCS isosurfaces. By defining an angle score that reflects the relative isosurface orientation for different tensor combinations, it was established that the ligand can be localized accurately using only three tensors, if the isosurfaces are close to orthogonal. For two out of three ligands, the determined position closely matched the X-ray coordinates. Our results for the third ligand suggest, in accordance with previously reported ab initio calculations, a rotated position for the difluorophenyl substituent, enabling a favorable interaction with Phe-131. The lanthanide-fluorine distance varied between 22 and 38 Å and induced 19F PCS ranged from 0.078 to 0.409 ppm, averaging to 0.213 ppm. Accordingly, even longer metal-fluorine distances will lead to meaningful PCS, rendering the investigation of protein-ligand complexes significantly larger than 30 kDa feasible.

Scoring multipole electrostatics in condensed-phase atomistic simulations.

Permanent multipoles (MTPs) embody a natural extension to common point-charge (PC) representations in atomistic simulations. In this work, we propose an alternative to the computationally expensive MTP molecular dynamics simulations by running a simple PC simulation and later reevaluate-"score''-all energies using the more detailed MTP force field. The method, which relies on the assumption that the PC and MTP force fields generate closely related phase spaces, is accomplished by enforcing identical sets of monopoles between the two force fields-effectively highlighting the higher MTP terms as a correction to the PC approximation. We first detail our consistent parametrization of the electrostatics and van der Waals interactions for the two force fields. We then validate the method by comparing the accuracy of protein-ligand binding free energies from both PC and MTP-scored representations with experimentally determined binding constants obtained by us. Specifically, we study the binding of several arylsulfonamide ligands to human carbonic anhydrase II. We find that both representations yield an accuracy of 1 kcal/mol with respect to experiment. Finally, we apply the method to rank the energetic contributions of individual atomic MTP coefficients for molecules solvated in water. All in all, MTP scoring is a computationally appealing method that can provide insight into the multipolar electrostatic interactions of condensed-phase systems.

Human carbonic anhydrase II as a host for piano-stool complexes bearing a sulfonamide anchor.

d(6)-piano-stool complexes bearing an arylsulfonamide anchor display sub-micromolar affinity towards human Carbonic Anhydrase II (hCA II). The 1.3 Šresolution X-ray crystal structure of [(η(6)-C(6)Me(6))Ru(bispy 3)Cl](+)⊂ hCA II highlights the nature of the host-guest interactions.