Sequence-based identification of amyloidogenic ß-hairpins reveals a prostatic acid phosphatase fragment promoting semen amyloid formation.

ABSTRACT

ß-Structure-rich amyloid fibrils are hallmarks of several diseases, including Alzheimer's (AD), Parkinson's (PD), and type 2 diabetes (T2D). While amyloid fibrils typically consist of parallel ß-sheets, the anti-parallel ß-hairpin is a structural motif accessible to amyloidogenic proteins in their monomeric and oligomeric states. Here, to investigate implications of ß-hairpins in amyloid formation, potential ß-hairpin-forming amyloidogenic segments in the human proteome were predicted based on sequence similarity with ß-hairpins previously observed in Aß, α-synuclein, and islet amyloid polypeptide, amyloidogenic proteins associated with AD, PD, and T2D, respectively. These three ß-hairpins, established upon binding to the engineered binding protein ß-wrapin AS10, are characterized by proximity of two sequence segments rich in hydrophobic and aromatic amino acids, with high ß-aggregation scores according to the TANGO algorithm. Using these criteria, 2505 potential ß-hairpin-forming amyloidogenic segments in 2098 human proteins were identified. Characterization of a test set of eight protein segments showed that seven assembled into Thioflavin T-positive aggregates and four formed ß-hairpins in complex with AS10 according to NMR. One of those is a segment of prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP) comprising amino acids 185-208. PAP is naturally cleaved into fragments, including PAP(248-286) which forms functional amyloid in semen. We find that PAP(185-208) strongly decreases the protein concentrations required for fibril formation of PAP(248-286) and of another semen amyloid peptide, SEM1(86-107), indicating that it promotes nucleation of semen amyloids. In conclusion, ß-hairpin-forming amyloidogenic protein segments could be identified in the human proteome with potential roles in functional or disease-related amyloid formation.