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Branching enzymes (BE) are responsible for the formation of branching points at the 1,6 position in glycogen and starch, by catalyzing the cleavage of α-1,4-linkages and the subsequent transfer by introducing α-1,6-linked glucose branched points. BEs are found in the large GH13 family, eukaryotic BEs being mainly classified in the GH13_8 subfamily, GH13_9 grouping almost exclusively prokaryotic enzymes. With the aim of contributing to the understanding of the mode of recognition and action of the enzymes belonging to GH13_8, and to the understanding of features distinguishing these enzymes from those belonging to subfamily 13_9, we solved the crystal structure of the glycogen branching enzyme (GBE) from the yeast Candida glabrata, CgGBE, in ligand-free forms and in complex with a maltotriose. The structures revealed the presence of a domain already observed in Homo sapiens and Oryza sativa BEs that we named α-helical N-terminal domain, in addition to the three conserved domains found in BE. We confirmed by phylogenetic analysis that this α-helical N-terminal domain is always present in the GH13_8 enzymes suggesting that it could actually present a signature for this subfamily. We identified two binding sites in the α-helical N-terminal domain and in the carbohydrate binding module 48 (CBM48), respectively, which show a unique structural organization only present in the Saccharomycotina phylum. Our structural and phylogenetic investigation provides new insight into the structural characterization of GH13_8 GBE revealing that unique structural features only present in the Saccharomycotina phylum thereby conferring original properties to this group of enzymes.

International audience; Low methoxyl pectin is known to gel with divalent cations (e.g. Ca2+, Zn2+). In this study, a new way of pectin gelation in the presence of an active pharmaceutical ingredient, chlorhexidine (CX), was highlighted. Thus chlorhexidine interactions with pectin were investigated and compared with the well-known pectin/Ca2+ binding model. Gelation mechanisms were studied by several physico-chemical methods such as zeta potential, viscosity, size measurements and binding isotherm was determined by Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (H-1 NMR). The binding process exhibited similar first two steps for both divalent ions: a stoichiometric monocomplexation of the polymer followed by a dimerization step. However, stronger interactions were observed between pectin and chlorhexidine. Moreover, the dimerization step occurred under stoichiometric conditions with chlorhexidine whereas non-stoichiometric conditions were involved with calcium ions. In the case of chlorhexidine, an additional intermolecular binding occurred in a third step.

We are grateful to Prof. Bernard Knoops and Andre Clippe from University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, for the generous gifts of biological materials to express the human peroxiredoxin in Escherichia coli. We thank Acellera Company for providing of a complementary 6 month ACEMD multi-GPU software licence and for the generous gift of a Nvidia Tesla K20 supercomputing unit; International audience; One of the intrinsic properties of proteins is their capacity to interact selectively with other molecules in their environment, inducing many chemical equilibria each differentiated by the mutual affinities of the components. A comprehensive understanding of these molecular binding processes at atomistic resolution requires formally the complete description of the system dynamics and statistics at the relevant time scales. While solution NMR observables are averaged over different time scales, from picosecond to second, recent new molecular dynamics protocols accelerated considerably the simulation time of realistic model systems. Based on known ligands recently discovered either by crystallography or NMR for the human peroxiredoxin 5, their affinities were for the first time accurately evaluated at atomistic resolution comparing absolute binding free-energy estimated by funnel-metadynamics simulations and solution NMR experiments. In particular, free-energy calculations are demonstrated to discriminate two closely related ligands as pyrocatechol and 4-methylpyrocathecol separated just by 1 kcal/mol in aqueous solution. The results provide a new experimental and theoretical basis for the estimation of ligand-protein affinities.

International audience; Physiological processes are mainly controlled by intermolecular recognition mechanisms involving protein-protein and protein-ligand (low molecular weight molecules) interactions. One of the most important tools for probing these interactions is high-field solution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) through protein-observed and ligand-observed experiments, where the protein receptor or the organic compounds are selectively detected. NMR binding experiments rely on comparison of NMR parameters of the free and bound states of the molecules. Ligand-observed methods are not limited by the protein molecular size and therefore have great applicability for analysing protein-ligand interactions. The use of these NMR techniques has considerably expanded in recent years, both in chemical biology and in drug discovery. We review here three major ligand-observed NMR methods that depend on the nuclear Overhauser effect-transferred nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy, saturation transfer difference spectroscopy and water-ligand interactions observed via gradient spectroscopy experiments-with the aim of reporting recent developments and applications for the characterization of protein-ligand complexes, including affinity measurements and structural determination.

Protein-protein interactions represent difficult but increasingly important targets for the design of therapeutic compounds able to interfere with biological processes. Recently, fragment-based strategies have been proposed as attractive approaches for the elaboration of protein-protein surface inhibitors from fragment-like molecules. One major challenge in targeting protein-protein interactions is related to the structural adaptation of the protein surface upon molecular recognition. Methods capable of identifying subtle conformational changes of proteins upon fragment binding are therefore required at the early steps of the drug design process. In this report we present a fast NMR method able to probe subtle conformational changes upon fragment binding. The approach relies on the comparison of experimental fragment-induced Chemical Shift Perturbation (CSP) of amine protons to CSP simulated for a set of docked fragment poses, considering the ring-current effect from fragment binding. We illustrate the method by the retrospective analysis of the complex between the anti-apoptotic Bcl-xL protein and the fragment 4'-fluoro-[1,1'-biphenyl]-4-carboxylic acid that was previously shown to bind one of the Bcl-xL hot spots. The CSP-based approach shows that the protein undergoes a subtle conformational rearrangement upon interaction, for residues located in helices [Formula: see text]2, [Formula: see text]3 and the very beginning of [Formula: see text]5. Our observations are corroborated by residual dipolar coupling measurements performed on the free and fragment-bound forms of the Bcl-xL protein. These NMR-based results are in total agreement with previous molecular dynamic calculations that evidenced a high flexibility of Bcl-xL around the binding site. Here we show that CSP of protein amine protons are useful and reliable structural probes. Therefore, we propose to use CSP simulation to assess protein conformational changes upon ligand binding in the fragment-based drug design approach.

International audience; While the basal transcription machinery in archaea is eukaryal-like, transcription factors in archaea and their viruses are usually related to bacterial transcription factors. Nevertheless, some of these organisms show predicted classical zinc fingers motifs of the C2H2 type, which are almost exclusively found in proteins of eukaryotes and most often associated with transcription regulators. In this work, we focused on the protein AFV1p06 from the hyperthermophilic archaeal virus AFV1. The sequence of the protein consists of the classical eukaryotic C2H2 motif with the fourth histidine coordinating zinc missing, as well as of N- and C-terminal extensions. We showed that the protein AFV1p06 binds zinc and solved its solution structure by NMR. AFV1p06 displays a zinc finger fold with a novel structure extension and disordered N- and C-termini. Structure calculations show that a glutamic acid residue that coordinates zinc replaces the fourth histidine of the C2H2 motif. Electromobility gel shift assays indicate that the protein binds to DNA with different affinities depending on the DNA sequence. AFV1p06 is the first experimentally characterised archaeal zinc finger protein with a DNA binding activity. The AFV1p06 protein family has homologues in diverse viruses of hyperthermophilic archaea. A phylogenetic analysis points out a common origin of archaeal and eukaryotic C2H2 zinc fingers.

International audience; To date, the signal transducing adaptor molecule 2 (STAM2) was shown to harbour two ubiquitin binding domains (UBDs) known as the VHS and UIM domains, while the SH3 domain of STAM2 was reported to interact with deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs) like UBPY and AMSH. In the present study, NMR evidences the interaction of the STAM2 SH3 domain with ubiquitin, demonstrating that SH3 constitutes the third UBD of STAM2. Furthermore, we show that a UBPY-derived peptide can outcompete ubiquitin for SH3 binding and vice versa. These results suggest that the SH3 domain of STAM2 plays versatile roles in the context of ubiquitin mediated receptor sorting.

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International audience; We have characterized the structure and the function of the 6.6-kDa protein SvtR (formerly called gp08) from the rod-shaped virus SIRV1, which infects the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus islandicus that thrives at 85 degrees C in hot acidic springs. The protein forms a dimer in solution. The NMR solution structure of the protein consists of a ribbon-helix-helix (RHH) fold between residues 13 and 56 and a disordered N-terminal region (residues 1-12). The structure is very similar to that of bacterial RHH proteins despite the low sequence similarity. We demonstrated that the protein binds DNA and uses its beta-sheet face for the interaction like bacterial RHH proteins. To detect all the binding sites on the 32.3-kb SIRV1 linear genome, we designed and performed a global genome-wide search of targets based on a simplified electrophoretic mobility shift assay. Four targets were recognized by the protein. The strongest binding was observed with the promoter of the gene coding for a virion structural protein. When assayed in a host reconstituted in vitro transcription system, the protein SvtR (Sulfolobus virus transcription regulator) repressed transcription from the latter promoter, as well as from the promoter of its own gene.

Human tRNA 3 Lys is used by HIV virus as a primer for the reverse transcription of its genome. The 18 nucleotides at the 3′-end of the tRNA 3 Lys are hybridized to a complementary sequence of the viral RNA called the primer-binding site. A screen against the human tRNA 3 Lys over a peptide library designed to target RNA has been performed. Of the 175 hexapeptides tested, three were found to bind to the d -stem of tRNA 3 Lys . Alanine-scanning was used to define the determinants of the interaction between the peptides and tRNA 3 Lys . They also bind to two other tested tRNAs, also at the level of the d -stem and loop, although the nucleotide sequence of the stem differs in one of them. These short peptides thus recognize specific structural features within the d -stem and loop of tRNAs. Associated with other pharmacophores, they could be useful to design optimized ligands targeting specific tRNAs such as retroviral replication primers.

Description of protein-ligand interactions is crucial for the understanding of all biological phenomena, and the drug design process. Thanks to new developments in computational devices, simulation of interaction equilibria using molecular dynamics are becoming state-of-the-art approach for the microscopic study of these molecular interactions. These new methods guide the conception and the optimization of new biological inhibitors. This project is focused on the use of funnel metadynamics for the prediction of protein-ligand affinities, and the description of interactions. Data obtained by metadynamics are correlated with experimental data from NMR and enzymatic assays.On the biological model of human peroxiredoxins, involved in the post ischemic inflammation cascade, interaction an inhibition of catechols derivatives have been studied. Data obtained from simulations have been used in the optimization process of the catechol fragment, to reach a better affinity and inhibition of human peroxiredoxins. Our results have shown that funnel-metadynamics allows the prediction of protein-ligand affinities, and the realistic description of the interaction, that lead to identify and optimize new bioactive molecules. Their inhibitory strengths and mechanisms have been examinated using enzymatic assays.Our research gives an overview of the possibilities brought by new numerical approaches, and their application in medicinal chemistry for example, La description des interactions protéine-ligand est d'une importance capitale pour la compréhension de phénomènes biologiques de toutes sortes, et dans le procédé de conception de nouvelles molécules bioactives. Avec l'avènement de nouveaux moyens de calculs numériques, la modélisation des équilibres d'interaction utilisant la dynamique moléculaire est de plus en plus utilisée pour l'étude au niveau microscopique permettant ainsi de guider la conception et l'optimisation de nouveaux inhibiteurs biologiques. Cette thèse est centrée sur l'utilisation de la funnel-métadynamique pour la prédiction d'affinités protéine-ligand et la description des interactions, en corrélation avec des données expérimentales de RMN et de cinétique enzymatique. Sur le modèle biologique des peroxyrédoxines humaines impliquées dans la cascade inflammatoire survenant après un choc ischémique, l'interaction et l'inhibition de composés catéchols ont été étudiées. Les données obtenues par dynamique sur l'interaction de dérivés catéchols ont été utilisées pour guider l'optimisation de cette molécule fragment pour une meilleure affinité et inhibition des peroxyrédoxines humaines. Nos résultats ont montré que la funnel-métadynamique, en plus de permettre la prédiction des affinités protéine-ligand, donnait une description réaliste de l'interaction pouvant mener à l'identification et l'optimisation de nouvelles molécules bioactives dont le potentiel inhibiteur a pu être examiné par cinétique enzymatique. Cette recherche fournit un aperçu des possibilités offertes par les nouvelles méthodes numériques, et leur application en chimie médicinale par exemple