Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 20, Issue 7, 2013

Brucellosis is a disease caused by bacteria belonging to the genus Brucella. It affects cattle, goat, sheep, dog and humans. The serodiagnosis of brucellosis involves detection of antibodies generated against the LPS or whole cell bacterial extracts, however these tests lack sensitivity and specificity. The present study was performed to optimize the culture condition for the production of recombinant Brucella melitensis outer membrane protein 28 kDa protein in E.coli via fed batch fermentation. Expression was induced with 1.5mM isopropyl β thiogalactoside and the expressed recombinant protein was purified using Ni-NTA affinity chromatography. After fed-batch fermentation the dry cell weight of 17.81 g/L and a purified protein yield of 210.10 mg/L was obtained. The purified Brucella melitensis recombinant Omp 28 kDa protein was analyzed through SDS- poly acrylamide gel electrophoresis and western blotting. The obtained recombinant protein was evaluated for its diagnostic application through Indirect ELISA using brucellosis suspected human sera samples. Our results clearly indicate that recombinant Omp28 produced via fed batch fermentation has immense potential as a diagnostic reagent that could be employed in sero monitoring of brucellosis.

Superoxide dismutase is an important enzyme with various therapeutic applications. Search of a new source of superoxide dismutase with novel properties has significant importance. The current work reports purification of a novel superoxide dismutase enzyme with unique characteristics. A copper zinc superoxide dismutase (Cu-Zn SOD) was purified and characterized from Cicer arietinum L. seedlings germinated under aluminium (Al+3) stress. The specific activity of purified protein was 158 units/mg with 28 fold purification. The superoxide dismutase is a homodimeric protein with approx subunit molecular weight of 33.27 kDa. The enzyme is identified as Cu-Zn category of superoxide dismutase, reflected by H2O2 induced inhibition of in-gel activity and presence of quantifiable copper and zinc ions. The optimum pH range for purified Cu-Zn SOD activity was observed within 6.5-8.5 (highest at pH 8.0) and the pH stability was in the range of 6.0-8.5. The enzyme was more stable at low temperature (below 30°C) and the Km of purified Cu-Zn SOD for riboflavin as substrate was 10.16 ± 2.5 µM. The N-terminal amino acid sequence showed homology at conserved residues with other plant Cu-Zn SODs

A thermostable superoxide dismutase from a thermophilic bacterium, called Geobacillus wiegeli (GWE1), isolated from the interior of a sterilization drying oven, was purified by anion-exchange and molecular size-exclusion liquid chromatography. On the basis of SDS-PAGE, the purified enzyme was found to be homogeneous and showed an estimated subunit molecular mass of 23.9 kDa. The holoenzyme is a homotetramer of 97.3 kDa. Superoxide dismutase exhibited maximal activity at pH 8.5 and at temperature around 60 °C. The enzyme was thermostable maintaining 50% of its activity even after 4.5 hours incubation at 60 °C and more than 70% of its activity after 30 min at 80 °C. When the microorganism was irradiated with UVA, an increase in the specific activity of superoxide dismutase was observed which was correlated with decreasing levels of anion superoxide, indicating the direct involvement of this enzyme in the capture of reactive oxygen species. This study reports the effects of UV radiation on a superoxide dismutase from a thermophilic bacterium isolated from an anthropogenic environment.

The solubility and structural properties of halophilic proteins are ascribed to their abundant acidic residues, resulting in large net negative charges at neutral pH. This study examined the effects of low pH, i.e., reduction of net negative charges on the structural properties of starch binding domain (SBD) of halophilic Kocuria varians α-amylase. Titration to pH 2.1 caused loss of 233 nm peak characteristic of aromatic interactions present in the native SBD at neutral pH and resulted in the spectrum with a 216 nm valley characteristic of β-sheet. The low pH β-sheet structure was stable against heat treatment. The addition of NaCl and trifluoroethanol resulted in decrease and increase of the 216 nm signal, without altering the spectral shape. These structural properties were significantly different from those of the native protein.

Hainantoxin-III (HNTX-III) purified from the venom of the spider Ornithoctonus hainana is a novel neurotoxin preferentially inhibiting tetrodotoxin-sensitive voltage-gated sodium channels in rat dorsal root ganglion cells. The structure of this toxin in aqueous solution was investigated using 2-D 1H-NMR techniques. The complete sequencespecific assignments of proton resonances in the 1H-NMR spectra were obtained by analyzing a series of 2-D spectra, including DQF-COSY, TOCSY and NOESY spectra, in H2O or D2O. All the backbone protons and more than 95% of the side-chain protons have been assigned by dαN, dβN, and dNN connectivities in NOESY spectrum. Furthermore, the secondary structure of HNTX-III was identified from NMR data. It consists mainly of a short triple-stranded antiparallel β-sheet formed by Asp7 to Cys9, Tyr21 to Ser23, and Lys27 to Val30. Because HNTX-III shares high sequence identity (>70%) with HWTX-I and HNTX-I, we proposed that they all share a structural scaffold known as the inhibitor cystine knot architectural motif. This study provides a basis for the further determination of the solution conformation of HNTX-III.

A novel lectin was isolated from the dried fruiting bodies of the wild mushroom Paxillus involutus. Isolation was conducted by anion exchange chromatography on DEAE-Cellulose, Q-Sepharose and gel filtration on Superdex 75 using a fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) system. This lectin had a molecular mass of 28 kDa and was composed of four identical subunits, each with a molecular mass of 7 kDa. N-terminal amino acid sequence of the P. involutus lectin was determined to be CTCAVFLNNTTVKS, which showed a low level of similarity to mushroom lectin sequences reported previously. The biochemical properties of this lectin were determined, and the hemagglutinating activity was inhibited by inulin and O-Nitrophenyl-β-D-galacto-pyranoside. Additionally, Ca2+, Zn2+, Cd2+, Fe2+, and Al3+ inhibited its hemagglutinating activity, while Cu2+ promoted this activity. This lectin exhibited poor thermostability and was sensitive to HCl, but it had a high tolerance to NaOH exposure. In terms of biological properties, this lectin manifested antiphytovirus activity towards tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) with a 70.61% inhibition at a concentration of 200 µg/mL. This lectin was devoid of inhibitory activities toward pathogenic fungi and HIV-1 reverse transcriptase, and antiproliferative activities were observed in tumor cell lines including lung cancer A-549 and human colon cancer HCT-8 cells.

The molecular dynamics simulation method was used to investigate the structural details for human prion protein (PrPN) and its D178N mutant (PrPM). Root-mean-square fluctuations (RMSFs) and the root-mean-square deviations (RMSDs) showed an increase in the flexibility and high dynamic plasticity of PrPM. Average Total energy for PrPM and PrPN sequentially was -2.975 x105 (kJmol-1) and -3.193 x 105 (kJmol-1). The results showed conformational rearrangement susceptibility for PrPM. For PrPM, highly surface-exposed Glu196 and Arg136 caused hydrogen bond weakening and electrostatic interactions changes in salt bridges. Hydrogen bond weakening under mutation can be mentioned as the leader of conformational changes and disease-related conversions. Contrary to some reports, the contributions of electrostatic interactions of Glu146–Arg208 and Arg156–Glu196 salt bridges for PrPN is less than of these interactions for PrPM. These interactions can pave the way to conformational changes in PrPM. The results showed that the role of the hydrogen bonds in the stability of human prion protein is more important than these salt bridges. The calculation of the solvent accessible surface area showed that the conformational plasticity in PrPM is mainly due to Asn residues that were solvent exposed. Conformational changes in the specific amino acids can affect metal-ion occupancy and function. The secondary structure has also showed that the structural transition arose from D178N mutation and occurs in specific residues. Our studies support the large scale effects of electrostatic forces at key position 178 of prion. As a result, the conformational rearrangements happen by eliminating only a single negative charge because of the mutation induced global forces in the prion structure. These rearrangements can be considered as a molecular switch, which triggers the initial stages of the conformational transition.

Prediction of essential proteins of a pathogenic organism is the key for the potential drug target identification, because inhibition of these would be fatal for the pathogen. Identification of these proteins requires the use of complex experimental techniques which are quite expensive and time consuming. We implemented Support Vector Machine algorithm to develop a classifier model for in silico prediction of prokaryotic essential proteins based on the physico-chemical properties of the amino acid sequences. This classifier was designed based on a set of 10 physico-chemical descriptor vectors (DVs) and 4 hybrid DVs calculated from amino acid sequences using PROFEAT and PseAAC servers. The classifier was trained using data sets consisting of 500 known essential and 500 non-essential proteins (n=1,000) and evaluated using an external validation set consisting of 3,462 essential proteins and 5,538 non-essential proteins (n=9,000). The performances of individual DV sets were evaluated. DV set 13, which is the combination of composition, transition and distribution descriptor set and hybrid autocorrelation descriptor set, provided accuracy of 91.2% in 10-fold cross-validation of the training set and an accuracy of 89.7% in external validation set and of 91.8% and 88.1% using a different yeast protein dataset. Our result indicates that this classification model can be used for identification of novel prokaryotic essential proteins.

CEL-I is a Gal/GalNAc-specific C-type lectin isolated from the sea cucumber Cucumaria echinata. This lectin is composed of two carbohydrate-recognition domains (CRDs) with the carbohydrate-recognition motif QPD (Gln-Pro- Asp), which is generally known to exist in galactose-specific C-type CRDs. In the present study, a mutant CEL-I with EPN (Glu-Pro-Asn) motif, which is thought to be responsible for the carbohydrate-recognition of mannose-specific Ctype CRDs, was produced in Escherichia coli, and its effects on the carbohydrate-binding specificity were examined using polyamidoamine dendrimer (PD) conjugated with carbohydrates. Although wild-type CEL-I effectively formed complexes with N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc)-PD but not with mannose-PD, the mutant CEL-I showed relatively weak but definite affinity for mannose-PD. These results indicated that the QPD and EPN motifs play a significant role in the carbohydrate-recognition mechanism of CEL-I, especially in the discrimination of galactose and mannose. Additional mutations in the recombinant CEL-I binding site may further increase its specificity for mannose, and should provide insights into designing novel carbohydrate-recognition proteins.

SecA ATPase plays a crucial role in translocation of membrane and secreted polypeptides and proteins in bacteria and therefore a perfect target for novel antimicrobial drug design. Herein, we generated QSAR models with an alignment-independent method. The optimum model obtained for the training set was statistically significant with crossvalidation regression coefficient (q2) value of 0.40 and correlation coefficient (r2) value of 0.89. These results suggest that this 3D-QSAR model can be used to guide the development of new SecA inhibitors.

An improved isocaudamer tandem repeat strategy for the production of short functional peptide was demonstrated in the study. The coding sequence of short peptide was codon optimized, and two isocaudamers were induced into the end of coding sequence. By re-cutting with isocaudamers and re-ligating, the coding sequence of short peptide in the expression vector was increased in a multiple manner (21, 22, 23, 24, 25 …….). In the present study, an 8 amino-acidresidue peptide of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) was effectively expressed in 8 copies and 16 copies by this approach, then the proteins in 8 copies and 16 copies were used to generate antibody against this epitope in rabbits. The results showed that PRRSVs were well recognized by the antibody in indirect immunofluorescence assay. The technology using isocaudamer to insert multiple tandem repeats in the vector provides an important approach for the studies of small molecule peptides.

Palustrin-OG1 (OG1) is a host defense peptide isolated from the frog Odorrana grahami. In this study, we analyzed the chemical properties, antimicrobial activities and cytotoxicities of OG1 and its derivatives to identify the most promising peptide as an antimicrobial agent. By increasing the net positive charge, amphipathicity and decreasing the mean hydrophobicity of OG1, the derivative named as OG2 exerted higher antimicrobial activity against bacteria but lower cytotoxicity against both porcine erythrocytes and peripheral blood mononuclear cells than did OG1 (P&;lt;0.01). After substitution of Cys residues of OG2 by Ala or Trp residues, two derivatives named as OG2A and OG2W were less effective against bacteria and induced greater hemolysis than did OG2, indicating the importance of Cys residues. The substitution of the C-terminal Thr of OG2 resulted OG2N, which decreased the cytotoxicity and improved killing kinetics against gram-positive bacteria by the rapid damage of cell wall and membrane.

The goose parvovirus (GPV) Rep1 protein is both essential for viral replication and a potential target for GPV diagnosis, but its protein characterization and intracellular localization is not clear. We constructed a recombinant plasmid, pET28a/GPV-Rep1, and expressed the Rep1 gene in BL21 (DE3) Escherichia coli. A protein approximately 75 kDa in size was obtained from lysates of E. coli cells expressing the recombinant plasmid. SDS-PAGE analysis showed that after induction with 0.6 mM isopropyl β-D-thiogalactosidase (IPTG) at 30°C for 5 h, the Rep1 protein was highly overexpressed. Two methods used to purify proteins, a salinity-gradient elution and Ni-NTA affinity chromatography, were performed. The amount of Rep1 protein obtained by Ni-NTA affinity chromatography was 41.23 mg, while 119.9 mg of Rep1 protein was obtained by a salinity-gradient elution from a 1 L E. coli BL21 (DE3) culture. An immunogenicity analysis showed that the protein could significantly elicit a specific antibody response in immunized goslings compared to control groups. Antibody titers peaked to 1:5120 (optical density (OD) 450 = 3.9) on day 28 after immunization but had mean titers of 1:10,240 (OD450 = 4.2) in gosling groups immunized with a commercially available GPV-attenuated vaccine strain. Experiments examining subcellular localization showed that the Rep1 protein appeared to associate predominantly with the nuclear membrane, especially during later times of infection. This work provides a basis for biochemical and structural studies on the GPV Rep1 protein.

Picrorhiza kurroa, an endangered medicinal plant found in the North-Western Himalayan region has a number of medicinal properties due to the presence of metabolites picroside-I and picroside-II. It is used in various herbal formulations like Picroliv, Livokin, Picrolax, Livomap, Tefroliv etc. Review of literature revealed that no information is available as of today on the proteome analysis of Picrorhiza kurroa. Hence, we aim to analyse the difference in proteome of Picrorhiza kurroa in response to ~ 17 times higher content of picroside-I at 15°C as compared to its content at 25°C. Thus, differential protein expression was studied. Densitometry analysis of SDS-PAGE gels of samples under two differential conditions of temperature revealed the presence of distinct set of proteins under picroside-I accumulating (15°C) versus non-accumulating (25°C) conditions. Mass spectrometric analysis of these proteins using MALDI-TOF MS followed by protein identification using database search on MASCOT search engine gave interesting results. The significant proteins identified were NAD(P)H-quinone oxidoreductase subunit K, shikimate kinase, ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase small chain and fructokinase fragment. Hence, these findings throw light on the involvement of these enzymes in the crucial physiological processes of Picrorhiza kurroa and can provide an insight into the biosynthesis of picrosides and other secondary metabolites.

One of the hallmarks of halophilic properties is reversibility of thermal unfolding. A nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NDK) from a moderate halophile Halomonas sp. 593 (HaNDK) follows this behavior. His-tagged chimeric NDK (HisPaHaNDK) consisting of an N-terminal half of a non-halophilic Pseuodomonas aeruginosa NDK (PaNDK) and a Cterminal half of HaNDK loses this reversible property, indicating a critical role of the N-terminal portion of PaNDK in determining the reversibility of the chimeric protein. Various mutations were introduced at Arg45 and Lys61, based on the model NDK structure. It appears that having Glu at position 45 is critical in conferring the thermal reversibility to HisPa- HaNDK chimeric protein.