Dancing retro: solution structure and micelle interactions of the retro-SH3-domain, retro-SHH-'Bergerac'

J Biomol Struct Dyn. 2014;32(2):257-72. doi: 10.1080/07391102.2012.762724. Epub 2013 Mar 25.

Abstract

A protein with the reversed direction of its polypeptide chain, retro-SHH, was analyzed by several spectroscopic techniques including circular dichroism and high-resolution NMR to understand its solution structure and structural consequences of interaction with the micelles formed by the zwitterionic detergent dodecylphosphocholine (DPC). This analysis revealed that retro-SHH does not contain rigid 3-D structure, but is characterized by the presence of residual secondary structure. Intriguingly, interaction with the DPC micelles affected the structures of SHH and retro-SHH very differently. In fact, micelles induce pronounced folding of retro-SHH, whereas micelle-bound SHH was noticeably disordered. Finally, we performed a disorder prediction with the PONDR-FIT algorithm and discovered that the reversal of the chain direction almost does not affect the propensity of a polypeptide for intrinsic disorder, since the disorder plot for retro-SHH was almost a mirror image of that for the normal SHH.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Basic-Leucine Zipper Transcription Factors / chemistry*
  • Basic-Leucine Zipper Transcription Factors / metabolism
  • Basic-Leucine Zipper Transcription Factors / ultrastructure*
  • Circular Dichroism
  • Micelles
  • Models, Molecular
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Biomolecular
  • Peptides / chemistry
  • Phosphorylcholine / analogs & derivatives
  • Phosphorylcholine / chemistry
  • Protein Folding
  • Protein Structure, Secondary
  • Protein Structure, Tertiary
  • Solutions
  • Structure-Activity Relationship
  • src Homology Domains*

Substances

  • Basic-Leucine Zipper Transcription Factors
  • Micelles
  • Peptides
  • Solutions
  • Phosphorylcholine
  • dodecylphosphocholine