The conserved Candida albicans CA3427 gene product defines a new family of proteins exhibiting the generic periplasmic binding protein structural fold.

Nosocomial diseases due to Candida albicans infections are in constant rise in hospitals, where they cause serious complications to already fragile intensive care patients. Antifungal drug resistance is fast becoming a serious issue due to the emergence of strains resistant to currently available antifungal agents. Thus the urgency to identify new potential protein targets, the function and structure of which may guide the development of new antifungal drugs. In this context, we initiated a comparative genomics study in search of promising protein coding genes among the most conserved ones in reference fungal genomes. The CA3427 gene was selected on the basis of its presence among pathogenic fungi contrasting with its absence in the non pathogenic Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We report the crystal 3D-structure of the Candida albicans CA3427 protein at 2.1 Å resolution. The combined analysis of its sequence and structure reveals a structural fold originally associated with periplasmic binding proteins. The CA3427 structure highlights a binding site located between the two protein domains, corresponding to a sequence segment conserved among fungi. Two crystal forms of CA3427 were found, suggesting that the presence or absence of a ligand at the proposed binding site might trigger a "Venus flytrap" motion, coupled to the previously described activity of bacterial periplasmic binding proteins. The conserved binding site defines a new subfamily of periplasmic binding proteins also found in many bacteria of the bacteroidetes division, in a choanoflagellate (a free-living unicellular and colonial flagellate eukaryote) and in a placozoan (the closest multicellular relative of animals). A phylogenetic analysis suggests that this gene family originated in bacteria before its horizontal transfer to an ancestral eukaryote prior to the radiation of fungi. It was then lost by the Saccharomycetales which include Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Structural genomics of highly conserved microbial genes of unknown function in search of new antibacterial targets.

With more than 100 antibacterial drugs at our disposal in the 1980's, the problem of bacterial infection was considered solved. Today, however, most hospital infections are insensitive to several classes of antibacterial drugs, and deadly strains of Staphylococcus aureus resistant to vancomycin--the last resort antibiotic--have recently begin to appear. Other life-threatening microbes, such as Enterococcus faecalis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis are already able to resist every available antibiotic. There is thus an urgent, and continuous need for new, preferably large-spectrum, antibacterial molecules, ideally targeting new biochemical pathways. Here we report on the progress of our structural genomics program aiming at the discovery of new antibacterial gene targets among evolutionary conserved genes of uncharacterized function. A series of bioinformatic and comparative genomics analyses were used to identify a set of 221 candidate genes common to Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. These genes were split between two laboratories. They are now submitted to a systematic 3-D structure determination protocol including cloning, protein expression and purification, crystallization, X-ray diffraction, structure interpretation, and function prediction. We describe here our strategies for the 111 genes processed in our laboratory. Bioinformatics is used at most stages of the production process and out of 111 genes processed--and 17 months into the project--108 have been successfully cloned, 103 have exhibited detectable expression, 84 have led to the production of soluble protein, 46 have been purified, 12 have led to usable crystals, and 7 structures have been determined.