Structure-based design approach to rational site-directed mutagenesis of ß-lactoglobulin.

Recombinant proteins play an important role in medicine and have diverse applications in industrial biotechnology. Lactoglobulin has shown great potential for use in targeted drug delivery and body fluid detoxification because of its ability to bind a variety of molecules. In order to modify the biophysical properties of ß-lactoglobulin, a series of single-site mutations were designed using a structure-based approach. A 3-dimensional structure alignment of homologous molecules led to the design of nine ß-lactoglobulin variants with mutations introduced in the binding pocket region. Seven stable and correctly folded variants (L39Y, I56F, L58F, V92F, V92Y, F105L, M107L) were thoroughly characterized by fluorescence, circular dichroism, isothermal titration calorimetry, size-exclusion chromatography, and X-ray structural investigations. The effects of the amino acid substitutions were observed as slight rearrangements of the binding pocket geometry, but they also significantly influenced the global properties of the protein. Most of the mutations increased the thermal/chemical stability without altering the dimerization constant or pH-dependent conformational behavior. The crystal structures reveal that the I56F and F105L mutations reduced the depth of the binding pocket, which is advantageous since it can reduce the affinity to endogenous fatty acids. The F105L mutant created a unique binding mode for a fatty acid, supporting the idea that lactoglobulin can be altered to bind unique molecules. Selected variants possessing a unique combination of their individual properties can be used for further, more advanced mutagenesis, and the presented results support further research using ß-lactoglobulin as a therapeutic delivery agent or a blood detoxifying molecule.

Polymorphism of amyloid-like fibrils can be defined by the concentration of seeds.

Prions are infectious proteins where the same protein may express distinct strains. The strains are enciphered by different misfolded conformations. Strain-like phenomena have also been reported in a number of other amyloid-forming proteins. One of the features of amyloid strains is the ability to self-propagate, maintaining a constant set of physical properties despite being propagated under conditions different from those that allowed initial formation of the strain. Here we report a cross-seeding experiment using strains formed under different conditions. Using high concentrations of seeds results in rapid elongation and new fibrils preserve the properties of the seeding fibrils. At low seed concentrations, secondary nucleation plays the major role and new fibrils gain properties predicted by the environment rather than the structure of the seeds. Our findings could explain conformational switching between amyloid strains observed in a wide variety of in vivo and in vitro experiments.

Elongation of mouse prion protein amyloid-like fibrils: effect of temperature and denaturant concentration.

Prion protein is known to have the ability to adopt a pathogenic conformation, which seems to be the basis for protein-only infectivity. The infectivity is based on self-replication of this pathogenic prion structure. One of possible mechanisms for such replication is the elongation of amyloid-like fibrils. We measured elongation kinetics and thermodynamics of mouse prion amyloid-like fibrils at different guanidine hydrochloride (GuHCl) concentrations. Our data show that both increases in temperature and GuHCl concentration help unfold monomeric protein and thus accelerate elongation. Once the monomers are unfolded, further increases in temperature raise the rate of elongation, whereas the addition of GuHCl decreases it. We demonstrated a possible way to determine different activation energies of amyloid-like fibril elongation by using folded and unfolded protein molecules. This approach separates thermodynamic data for fibril-assisted monomer unfolding and for refolding and formation of amyloid-like structure.

Amyloid-like fibril elongation follows michaelis-menten kinetics.

A number of proteins can aggregate into amyloid-like fibrils. It was noted that fibril elongation has similarities to an enzymatic reaction, where monomers or oligomers would play a role of substrate and nuclei/fibrils would play a role of enzyme. The question is how similar these processes really are. We obtained experimental data on insulin amyloid-like fibril elongation at the conditions where other processes which may impact kinetics of fibril formation are minor and fitted it using Michaelis-Menten equation. The correlation of the fit is very good and repeatable. It speaks in favour of enzyme-like model of fibril elongation. In addition, obtained [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] values at different conditions may help in better understanding influence of environmental factors on the process of fibril elongation.