蛋白质功能的扩展与人工金属结合位点的理性设计

生物体系中金属离子在调节金属蛋白的结构和功能中发挥着至关重要的作用。本文综述了利用人工金属结合位点的理性设计来扩展蛋白质功能范围的研究进展,包括在蛋白分子内部通过探索潜在的结合金属位点、重新设计已有的金属结合位点、以及设计全新的金属结合位点的方法来设计人工金属结合位点,和在蛋白分子表面进行设计,来获得结构及功能的转化、研究与纳米材料间的相互作用、以及进行蛋白质分子的自组装。这些研究进展极大地丰富了我们对金属蛋白结构与功能关系的认识。同时,也赋予了我们控制及利用感兴趣蛋白的能力。     

金属离子对金属蛋白结构与功能的调控

生命金属在生命过程中以不同的化学方式发挥着重要的作用。质膜、细胞器膜等使不同的生命金属在生物体系中有着不同的隔室化分布,相应的金属蛋白或金属伴侣蛋白在维持金属离子内稳态(homeostasis)中起着关键作用。生命体系中广泛存在着具有两个以上金属离子结合部位的金属蛋白。在确定的生理微环境下,由于金属离子结合热力学性质的不等价,该类金属蛋白的生物学功能取决于所结合金属离子的种类及多少。本文以伴刀豆球蛋白A、铜/锌超氧化物歧化酶、中心蛋白、锌指蛋白为例,介绍了金属离子在调控金属蛋白生物学功能中的作用。因此,深入研究金属离子与金属蛋白结合的热力学性质对于理解生命过程的无机化学基础具有重要意义。     

蛋白质分子理性设计与肌红蛋白功能的调控及拓展

蛋白质分子理性设计,不但对于揭示天然金属蛋白的结构与功能关系,而且对于创造具有性质和功能改善的人工金属蛋白,都是一个功能强大的策略.肌红蛋白(myoglobin,Mb),自然界创造的一种具有多重生物功能的血红素蛋白,已被证明是蛋白质分子理性设计的理想框架.本文主要综述了两个方面,一是对其天然的氧结合与运输、过氧化物酶(peroxidase)和亚硝酸盐还原酶(nitrite reductase,NIR)的功能进行调控,二是将其功能理性拓展到过氧酶(peroxygenase)、血红素-铜氧化酶(heme-copper oxidase,HCO)、一氧化氮还原酶(nitric oxide reductase,NOR)和羟胺还原酶(hydroxylamine reductase)等.这些研究加深了我们对自然界金属蛋白如何工作的理解,也为将来具有实际应用前景的功能金属蛋白的理性分子设计提供了线索.     

血红素蛋白的分子设计新趋向

综述了近年来有关血红素蛋白分子设计所出现的新趋向, 包括氨基酸选择突变与血红素修饰相结合,非天然辅基的引入,非天然氨基酸的引入,辅基与蛋白肽链的共价结合,以及全新血红素蛋白的设计与构建5个方面。这些新发展趋向对研究金属蛋白的结构-功能关系提供了重要的信息,同时也为这些理性设计的新颖金属蛋白分子拓宽了其在生物化学、生物工程和药学上的应用。     

人工金属酶分子设计新进展:肌红蛋白研究实例分析

金属酶在生物体中发挥着多种至关重要的作用,而人工金属酶的分子设计能够调控和拓展天然金属酶的功能,甚至创造出功能更为优越的新型酶分子。肌红蛋白（Mb）是作为血红素蛋白或其他金属蛋白分子设计的理想蛋白模型。近些年,基于Mb蛋白骨架的人工金属酶的分子设计逐渐发展了多种研究策略,包括设计氢键网络、金属结合位点、分子内二硫键、利用蛋白翻译后修饰、引入非天然氨基酸和非天然辅基等。本文着重综述这些方面的最新研究进展,可以帮助我们深刻认识金属酶的结构与功能关系,同时掌握人工金属酶分子设计的思路与方法,从而有助于推动这一领域的快速发展。     

金属蛋白研究中几个值得注意的动向

本文叙述了金属蛋白和金属酶研究中近年来几个值得注意的发展动向，即与金属离子相关的疾病（特别是神经退行性疾病）、金属离子在蛋白质的折叠、聚集和装配中的作用，金属伴侣分子、金属蛋白的设计和构建、金属蛋白与DNA相互作用。     

香豆素衍生物荧光探针研究进展

对近5年来设计合成的新型香豆素荧光探针研究进展进行综述。系统阐述合成新型香豆素荧光探针在生物学领域的应用,主要包括检测内源性物质、监测细胞结构形态、对重金属离子的定性定量分析等。香豆素母核的活性位点多样,适于结构修饰,基于香豆素荧光探针对7、8位的活性位点进行改造,得到一系列新型香豆素衍生物荧光探针。通过对此类荧光传感器相关技术进展进行综述,为寻找新的荧光结合位点以及合成新型香豆素衍生物传感器提供参考。     

金属离子对蛋白质的折叠、识别、自组装及功能的影响*

金属离子不仅影响金属蛋白的空间结构,还与生物大分子的识别、自组装等性质和生物功能密切相关。在很多蛋白质中,金属离子及其配合物可以诱导周围的肽段折叠成正确的结构,我们将其称为金属结合部位作为模板诱导的结构基序（Template-mediated structural motif,TMSM)。深入研究金属离子在蛋白质-核酸自组装体系中生物大分子交联及聚集体中的作用,对理解生命的无机化学基础具有重要意义。     

计算机辅助糖苷酶分子设计与改造研究进展

糖苷酶作为一种重要的生物催化剂,在工业生物催化领域有着广阔的应用前景。但天然糖苷酶存在催化活性低、热稳定性和底物选择性差等缺点,严重限制了它在规模化生产中的推广应用。近年,有关糖苷酶催化机制与结构功能关系的研究备受关注,特别是计算机辅助酶设计在相关研究领域发挥着越来越重要的作用。本文综述了糖苷酶分子设计改造过程中应用的计算机辅助方法：包括同源比对、分子对接以及动力学模拟;系统阐述了这些计算方法在糖苷酶的结构与功能关系解析、酶催化分子机制、酶催化性能改造方面的应用现状。通过对上述方法的深入分析可以预见,计算机辅助方法将成为糖苷酶分子设计改造的重要手段,并且开发智能精准的计算分析方法将成为加快酶分子定向改造的新发展趋势。     

二维光催化材料电子结构和性能调控策略研究进展

二维光催化材料具有丰富的表面活性位点、独特的几何结构、可调的电子结构和良好的光催化活性,在环境净化和能源转化等领域具有潜在的应用价值。鉴于此,二维光催化材料的合成方法和性能调控策略得到了快速发展。以往的策略主要集中在形貌和几何结构特征的调节上,实际上并不能完全满足高效稳定的光催化剂的设计需求。通过表面设计构建丰富的活性位点和调整电子结构,可以提高光催化性能及其稳定性。本文从光吸收、电荷分离和活性位点三个方面综述了二维光催化材料的表面设计和电子结构调控策略的研究进展,包括元素掺杂、异质结设计、缺陷构造、单原子修饰、等离子体金属负载等方法,总结了电子结构调控对二维光催化材料净化典型空气污染物反应机理的影响机制。最后,对二维光催化材料研究中存在的问题和挑战进行了分析和展望。     

Catalysis and Electron Transfer in De Novo Designed Helical Scaffolds

The relationship between protein structure and function is one of the greatest puzzles within biochemistry. De novo metalloprotein design is a way to wipe the board clean and determine what is required to build in function from the ground up in an unrelated structure. This Review focuses on protein design efforts to create de novo metalloproteins within alpha‐helical scaffolds. Examples of successful designs include those with carbonic anhydrase or nitrite reductase activity by incorporating a ZnHis₃ or CuHis₃ site, or that recapitulate the spectroscopic properties of unique electron‐transfer sites in cupredoxins (CuHis₂Cys) or rubredoxins (FeCys₄). This work showcases the versatility of alpha helices as scaffolds for metalloprotein design and the progress that is possible through careful rational design. Our studies cover the invariance of carbonic anhydrase activity with different site positions and scaffolds, refinement of our cupredoxin models, and enhancement of nitrite reductase activity up to 1000‐fold.     

Conversion of antennapedia homeodomain to zinc finger-like domain: Zn(II)-induced change in protein conformation and DNA binding

From the standpoint of protein dynamics and metalloprotein design, it is interesting to create an artificial protein which induces structural change and regulates its function by metal-ion binding. We engineered a novel protein, "Antennafinger (Ant-F)", whose structure and function can be controlled with Zn(II), by introducing the consensus sequence of a Cys(2)His(2)-type zinc finger protein into a non-metalloprotein scaffold, an Antennapedia homeodomain mutant (Ant-wt), selected using a motif-searching system. The circular dichroism studies demonstrate that Ant-F has secondary structures similar to Ant-wt and also changes its conformation due to Zn(II)-binding. The optical absorption spectra of the Co(II) complexes of Ant-F and its derivative proteins suggest that the geometry of the metal center of holo-Ant-F is tetrahedral and that the mutated Cys(2)His(2) residues are involved in the complex formation. In addition, the gel mobility shift assay reveals that the DNA binding activity of Ant-F can be regulated through Zn(II)-induced structural alteration. These results provide valuable information about the dynamic properties of proteins and a novel concept for metalloprotein design.     

Femtomolar Zn(II) affinity in a peptide-based ligand designed to model thiolate-rich metalloprotein active sites

Metal-ligand interactions are critical components of metalloprotein assembly, folding, stability, electrochemistry, and catalytic function. Research over the past 3 decades on the interaction of metals with peptide and protein ligands has progressed from the characterization of amino acid-metal and polypeptide-metal complexes to the design of folded protein scaffolds containing multiple metal cofactors. De novo metalloprotein design has emerged as a valuable tool both for the modular synthesis of these complex metalloproteins and for revealing the fundamental tenets of metalloprotein structure-function relationships. Our research has focused on using the coordination chemistry of de novo designed metalloproteins to probe the interactions of metal cofactors with protein ligands relevant to biological phenomena. Herein, we present a detailed thermodynamic analysis of Fe(II), Co(II), Zn(II), and[4Fe-4S]2(+/+) binding to IGA, a 16 amino acid peptide ligand containing four cysteine residues, H2N-KLCEGG-CIGCGAC-GGW-CONH2. These studies were conducted to delineate the inherent metal-ion preferences of this unfolded tetrathiolate peptide ligand as well as to evaluate the role of the solution pH on metal-peptide complex speciation. The [4Fe-4S]2(+/+)-IGA complex is both an excellent peptide-based synthetic analogue for natural ferredoxins and is flexible enough to accommodate mononuclear metal-ion binding. Incorporation of a single ferrous ion provides the FeII-IGA complex, a spectroscopic model of a reduced rubredoxin active site that possesses limited stability in aqueous buffers. As expected based on the Irving-Williams series and hard-soft acid-base theory, the Co(II) and Zn(II) complexes of IGA are significantly more stable than the Fe(II) complex. Direct proton competition experiments, coupled with determinations of the conditional dissociation constants over a range of pH values, fully define the thermodynamic stabilities and speciation of each MII-IGA complex. The data demonstrate that FeII-IGA and CoII-IGA have formation constant values of 5.0 x 10(8) and 4.2 x 10(11) M-1, which are highly attenuated at physiological pH values. The data also evince that the formation constant for ZnII-IGA is 8.0 x 10(15) M-1, a value that exceeds the tightest natural protein Zn(II)-binding affinities. The formation constant demonstrates that the metal-ligand binding energy of a ZnII(S-Cys)4 site can stabilize a metalloprotein by -21.6 kcal/mol. Rigorous thermodynamic analyses such as those demonstrated here are critical to current research efforts in metalloprotein design, metal-induced protein folding, and metal-ion trafficking.     

An engineered azurin variant containing a selenocysteine copper ligand

Modulating the properties of proteins through de novo design or redesign of existing proteins has been a longstanding goal in protein chemistry. Over the past two decades, site-directed mutagenesis has been a powerful tool to probe the role of certain residues and to fine-tune the activity of proteins. A limitation of this approach has been the accessibility of only a restricted number of functional groups through the 20 amino acids in the genetic code. The more recent technique of expressed protein ligation (EPL) provides an alternative route that allows efficient incorporation of nonnatural residues into proteins. We report here the preparation and spectroscopic characterization of an azurin variant in which a cysteine ligand to the blue copper center has been replaced by EPL with selenocysteine (Sec). This reports marks the first time that selenocysteine is artificially incorporated into the active site of a metalloprotein. The variant displays a significantly increased A(parallel) (from 56 to 104 G) and red-shifted CT band (from 625 to 677 nm), while maintaining the general type 1 copper characteristics, including similarity in reduction potentials. This study illustrates that iso-structural substitution using EPL can fine-tune the structural and functional properties of a metal-binding site without loss of most of its characteristics. Further spectroscopic and X-ray crystallographic studies of this and other EPL variants will provide new insights into the fine-control of the structure and function of metalloproteins.     

Rational design of a calcium-binding protein

Calcium ions play key roles as structural components in biomineralization and as a second messenger in signaling pathways. We have introduced a de novo designed calcium-binding site into the framework of a non-calcium-binding protein, domain 1 of CD2. The resulting protein selectively binds calcium over magnesium with calcium-binding affinity comparable to that of natural extracellular calcium-binding proteins (K(d) of 50 microM). This experiment is the first successful metalloprotein design that has a high coordination number (seven) metal-binding site constructed into a beta-sheet protein. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of designing a single calcium-binding site into a host protein, taking into account only local properties of a calcium-binding site obtained by a survey of natural calcium-binding proteins and chelators. The resulting site exhibits strong metal selectivity, suggesting that it should now be feasible to understand and manipulate signaling processes by designing novel calcium-modulated proteins with specifically desired functions and to affect their stability.     

卟啉纳米组装与生物传感

卟啉是一类重要的有机共轭分子,可以模拟许多酶的活性中心。一系列卟啉仿生酶已被合成,并用于模拟生物蛋白酶的催化活性,包括平面卟啉、栅栏卟啉、扩展环卟啉和三元环卟啉。在生物体内,许多金属蛋白酶经常自组装成纳米尺度的超分子结构来实现其基本的生物催化作用。卟啉可以通过共价或者非共价作用有序组装在纳米材料上,实现其模拟金属蛋白酶的功能。金属卟啉是良好的电子媒介体,对生命过程相关小分子的氧化还原具有较好的电催化活性。因此,金属卟啉纳米组装形成的纳米材料复合物可用于新型电化学生物传感器的构建。基于卟啉纳米材料复合物的光物理和光化学性质构建的新型光电化学生物传感平台已用于生物分子的检测。本文主要从卟啉仿生酶的合成、有序纳米组装和卟啉纳米复合物的生物传感进行评述,为构建新型电化学和光电化学传感器提供有用信息。     

Structural reorganization renders enhanced metalloprotein stability

The enhanced stability of a mesophilic metalloprotein was assessed using biophysical spectroscopies. Significant local structural interconversions during thermal insult account for a reorganization of the protein scaffold, without disturbing the active metal site. This cushioning mechanism is proposed to be a generic property of metalloproteins contributing to enhanced stability.     

Multi‐Objective Molecular De Novo Design by Adaptive Fragment Prioritization

We present the development and application of a computational molecular de novo design method for obtaining bioactive compounds with desired on‐ and off‐target binding. The approach translates the nature‐inspired concept of ant colony optimization to combinatorial building block selection. By relying on publicly available structure–activity data, we developed a predictive quantitative polypharmacology model for 640 human drug targets. By taking reductive amination as an example of a privileged reaction, we obtained novel subtype‐selective and multitarget‐modulating dopamine D₄ antagonists, as well as ligands selective for the sigma‐1 receptor with accurately predicted affinities. The nanomolar potencies of the hits obtained, their high ligand efficiencies, and an overall success rate of 90 % demonstrate that this ligand‐based computer‐aided molecular design method may guide target‐focused combinatorial chemistry.     

Modifying the Steric Properties in the Second Coordination Sphere of Designed Peptides Leads to Enhancement of Nitrite Reductase Activity

Protein design is a useful strategy to interrogate the protein structure‐function relationship. We demonstrate using a highly modular 3‐stranded coiled coil (TRI‐peptide system) that a functional type 2 copper center exhibiting copper nitrite reductase (NiR) activity exhibits the highest homogeneous catalytic efficiency under aqueous conditions for the reduction of nitrite to NO and H₂O. Modification of the amino acids in the second coordination sphere of the copper center increases the nitrite reductase activity up to 75‐fold compared to previously reported systems. We find also that steric bulk can be used to enforce a three‐coordinate Cu^I in a site, which tends toward two‐coordination with decreased steric bulk. This study demonstrates the importance of the second coordination sphere environment both for controlling metal‐center ligation and enhancing the catalytic efficiency of metalloenzymes and their analogues.     

Structural chemistry of a green fluorescent protein Zn biosensor

We designed a green fluorescent protein mutant (BFPms1) that preferentially binds Zn(II) (enhancing fluorescence intensity) and Cu(II) (quenching fluorescence) directly to a chromophore ligand that resembles a dipyrrole unit of a porphyrin. Crystallographic structure determination of apo, Zn(II)-bound, and Cu(II)-bound BFPms1 to better than 1.5 A resolution allowed us to refine metal centers without geometric restraints, to calculate experimental standard uncertainty errors for bond lengths and angles, and to model thermal displacement parameters anisotropically. The BFPms1 Zn(II) site (KD = 50 muM) displays distorted trigonal bipyrimidal geometry, with Zn(II) binding to Glu222, to a water molecule, and tridentate to the chromophore ligand. In contrast, the BFPms1 Cu(II) site (KD = 24 muM) exhibits square planar geometry similar to metalated porphyrins, with Cu(II) binding to the chromophore chelate and Glu222. The apo structure reveals a large electropositive region near the designed metal insertion channel, suggesting a basis for the measured metal cation binding kinetics. The preorganized tridentate ligand is accommodated in both coordination geometries by a 0.4 A difference between the Zn and Cu positions and by distinct rearrangements of Glu222. The highly accurate metal ligand bond lengths reveal different protonation states for the same oxygen bound to Zn vs Cu, with implications for the observed metal ion specificity. Crystallographic anisotropic thermal factor analysis validates metal ion rigidification of the chromophore in enhancement of fluorescence intensity upon Zn(II) binding. Thus, our high-resolution structures reveal how structure-based design has effectively linked selective metal binding to changes in fluorescent properties. Furthermore, this protein Zn(II) biosensor provides a prototype suitable for further optimization by directed evolution to generate metalloprotein variants with desirable physical or biochemical properties.