Biophysical and electrochemical studies of protein-nucleic acid interactions

This review is devoted to biophysical and electrochemical methods used for studying protein-nucleic acid (NA) interactions. The importance of NA structure and protein-NA recognition for essential cellular processes, such as replication or transcription, is discussed to provide background for description of a range of biophysical chemistry methods that are applied to study a wide scope of protein-DNA and protein-RNA complexes. These techniques employ different detection principles with specific advantages and limitations and are often combined as mutually complementary approaches to provide a complete description of the interactions. Electrochemical methods have proven to be of great utility in such studies because they provide sensitive measurements and can be combined with other approaches that facilitate the protein-NA interactions. Recent applications of electrochemical methods in studies of protein-NA interactions are discussed in detail

Thermodynamic competition between membrane protein oligomeric states

Self-assembly of protein monomers into distinct membrane protein oligomers provides a general mechanism for diversity in the molecular architectures, and resulting biological functions, of membrane proteins. We develop a general physical framework describing the thermodynamic competition between different oligomeric states of membrane proteins. Using the mechanosensitive channel of large conductance as a model system, we show how the dominant oligomeric states of membrane proteins emerge from the interplay of protein concentration in the cell membrane, protein-induced lipid bilayer deformations, and direct monomer-monomer interactions. Our results suggest general physical mechanisms and principles underlying regulation of protein function via control of membrane protein oligomeric state.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Probing cellular protein complexes using single-molecule pull-down.

Proteins perform most cellular functions in macromolecular complexes. The same protein often participates in different complexes to exhibit diverse functionality. Current ensemble approaches of identifying cellular protein interactions cannot reveal physiological permutations of these interactions. Here we describe a single-molecule pull-down (SiMPull) assay that combines the principles of a conventional pull-down assay with single-molecule fluorescence microscopy and enables direct visualization of individual cellular protein complexes. SiMPull can reveal how many proteins and of which kinds are present in the in vivo complex, as we show using protein kinase A. We then demonstrate a wide applicability to various signalling proteins found in the cytosol, membrane and cellular organelles, and to endogenous protein complexes from animal tissue extracts. The pulled-down proteins are functional and are used, without further processing, for single-molecule biochemical studies. SiMPull should provide a rapid, sensitive and robust platform for analysing protein assemblies in biological pathways

Physical limits on cooperative protein-DNA binding and the kinetics of combinatorial transcription regulation

Much of the complexity observed in gene regulation originates from cooperative protein-DNA binding. While studies of the target search of proteins for their specific binding sites on the DNA have revealed design principles for the quantitative characteristics of protein-DNA interactions, no such principles are known for the cooperative interactions between DNA-binding proteins. We consider a simple theoretical model for two interacting transcription factor (TF) species, searching for and binding to two adjacent target sites hidden in the genomic background. We study the kinetic competition of a dimer search pathway and a monomer search pathway, as well as the steady-state regulation function mediated by the two TFs over a broad range of TF-TF interaction strengths. Using a transcriptional AND-logic as exemplary functional context, we identify the functionally desirable regime for the interaction. We find that both weak and very strong TF-TF interactions are favorable, albeit with different characteristics. However, there is also an unfavorable regime of intermediate interactions where the genetic response is prohibitively slow.Comment: manuscript and supplementary material combined into a single document; to be published in Biophysical Journa

Applications of AFM in pharmaceutical sciences

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a high-resolution imaging technique that uses a small probe (tip and cantilever) to provide topographical information on surfaces in air or in liquid media. By pushing the tip into the surface or by pulling it away, nanomechanical data such as compliance (stiffness, Young’s Modulus) or adhesion, respectively, may be obtained and can also be presented visually in the form of maps displayed alongside topography images. This chapter outlines the principles of operation of AFM, describing some of the important imaging modes and then focuses on the use of the technique for pharmaceutical research. Areas include tablet coating and dissolution, crystal growth and polymorphism, particles and fibres, nanomedicine, nanotoxicology, drug-protein and protein-protein interactions, live cells, bacterial biofilms and viruses. Specific examples include mapping of ligand-receptor binding on cell surfaces, studies of protein-protein interactions to provide kinetic information and the potential of AFM to be used as an early diagnostic tool for cancer and other diseases. Many of these reported investigations are from 2011-2014, both from the literature and a few selected studies from the authors’ laboratories

Double mutant cycles as a tool to address folding, binding, and allostery

Quantitative measurement of intramolecular and intermolecular interactions in protein structure is an elusive task, not easy to address experimentally. The phenomenon denoted ‘energetic coupling’ describes short- and long-range interactions between two residues in a protein system. A powerful method to identify and quantitatively characterize long-range interactions and allosteric networks in proteins or protein-ligand complexes is called double-mutant cycles analysis. In this review we describe the thermodynamic principles and basic equations that underlie the double mutant cycle methodology, its fields of application and latest employments, and caveats and pitfalls that the experimentalists must consider. In particular, we show how double mutant cycles can be a powerful tool to investigate allosteric mechanisms in protein binding reactions as well as elusive states in protein folding pathways

Signatures of Pleiotropy, Economy and Convergent Evolution in a Domain-Resolved Map of Human–Virus Protein–Protein Interaction Networks

A central challenge in host-pathogen systems biology is the elucidation of general, systems-level principles that distinguish host-pathogen interactions from within-host interactions. Current analyses of host-pathogen and within-host protein-protein interaction networks are largely limited by their resolution, treating proteins as nodes and interactions as edges. Here, we construct a domain-resolved map of human-virus and within-human protein-protein interaction networks by annotating protein interactions with high-coverage, high-accuracy, domain-centric interaction mechanisms: (1) domain-domain interactions, in which a domain in one protein binds to a domain in a second protein, and (2) domain-motif interactions, in which a domain in one protein binds to a short, linear peptide motif in a second protein. Analysis of these domain-resolved networks reveals, for the first time, significant mechanistic differences between virus-human and within-human interactions at the resolution of single domains. While human proteins tend to compete with each other for domain binding sites by means of sequence similarity, viral proteins tend to compete with human proteins for domain binding sites in the absence of sequence similarity. Independent of their previously established preference for targeting human protein hubs, viral proteins also preferentially target human proteins containing linear motif-binding domains. Compared to human proteins, viral proteins participate in more domain-motif interactions, target more unique linear motif-binding domains per residue, and contain more unique linear motifs per residue. Together, these results suggest that viruses surmount genome size constraints by convergently evolving multiple short linear motifs in order to effectively mimic, hijack, and manipulate complex host processes for their survival. Our domain-resolved analyses reveal unique signatures of pleiotropy, economy, and convergent evolution in viral-host interactions that are otherwise hidden in the traditional binary network, highlighting the power and necessity of high-resolution approaches in host-pathogen systems biology