scholarly journals Sequence determinants of in cell condensate morphology, dynamics, and oligomerization as measured by number and brightness analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan J. Emenecker ◽  
Alex S. Holehouse ◽  
Lucia C. Strader
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Composition ◽  
Acid Composition ◽  
Material Properties ◽  
Auxin Signaling ◽  
Oligomeric State ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered Regions ◽  
Brightness Analysis

Abstract Background Biomolecular condensates are non-stoichiometric assemblies that are characterized by their capacity to spatially concentrate biomolecules and play a key role in cellular organization. Proteins that drive the formation of biomolecular condensates frequently contain oligomerization domains and intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), both of which can contribute multivalent interactions that drive higher-order assembly. Our understanding of the relative and temporal contribution of oligomerization domains and IDRs to the material properties of in vivo biomolecular condensates is limited. Similarly, the spatial and temporal dependence of protein oligomeric state inside condensates has been largely unexplored in vivo. Methods In this study, we combined quantitative microscopy with number and brightness analysis to investigate the aging, material properties, and protein oligomeric state of biomolecular condensates in vivo. Our work is focused on condensates formed by AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR 19 (ARF19), a transcription factor integral to the auxin signaling pathway in plants. ARF19 contains a large central glutamine-rich IDR and a C-terminal Phox Bem1 (PB1) oligomerization domain and forms cytoplasmic condensates. Results Our results reveal that the IDR amino acid composition can influence the morphology and material properties of ARF19 condensates. In contrast the distribution of oligomeric species within condensates appears insensitive to the IDR composition. In addition, we identified a relationship between the abundance of higher- and lower-order oligomers within individual condensates and their apparent fluidity. Conclusions IDR amino acid composition affects condensate morphology and material properties. In ARF condensates, altering the amino acid composition of the IDR did not greatly affect the oligomeric state of proteins within the condensate.

scholarly journals Sequence determinants of in cell condensate assembly morphology, dynamics, and oligomerization as measured by number and brightness analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan J Emenecker ◽  
Alex S Holehouse ◽  
Lucia Strader
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Composition ◽  
Acid Composition ◽  
Material Properties ◽  
Oligomeric State ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered Regions ◽  
Brightness Analysis ◽  
Oligomerization Domain

Background: Biomolecular condensates are non-stoichiometric assemblies that are characterized by their capacity to spatially concentrate biomolecules and play a key role in cellular organization. Proteins that drive the formation of biomolecular condensates frequently contain oligomerization domains and intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), both of which can contribute multivalent interactions that drive higher-order assembly. Our understanding of the relative and temporal contribution of oligomerization domains and IDRs to the material properties of in vivo biomolecular condensates is limited. Similarly, the spatial and temporal dependence of protein oligomeric state inside condensates has been largely unexplored in vivo. Methods: In this study, we combined quantitative microscopy with number and brightness analysis to investigate the aging, material properties, and protein oligomeric state of biomolecular condensates in vivo. Our work is focused on condensates formed by AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR 19 (ARF19), which is a transcription factor integral to the signaling pathway for the plant hormone auxin. ARF19 contains a large central glutamine-rich IDR and a C-terminal Phox Bem1 (PB1) oligomerization domain and forms cytoplasmic condensates. Results: Our results reveal that the IDR amino acid composition can influence the morphology and material properties of ARF19 condensates. In contrast the distribution of oligomeric species within condensates appears insensitive to the IDR composition. In addition, we identified a relationship between the abundance of higher- and lower-order oligomers within individual condensates and their apparent fluidity. Conclusions: IDR amino acid composition affects condensate morphology and material properties. In ARF condensates, altering the amino acid composition of the IDR did not greatly affect the oligomeric state of proteins within the condensate.

scholarly journals Proteins of generalist and specialist pathogens differ in their amino acid composition

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. e201800017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luz P Blanco ◽  
Bryan L Payne ◽  
Felix Feyertag ◽  
David Alvarez-Ponce
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Composition ◽  
Host Range ◽  
Acid Composition ◽  
Secreted Proteins ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered Regions ◽  
Cytoplasmic Proteins ◽  
Disordered Regions

Pathogens differ in their host specificities, with species infecting a unique host (specialist pathogens) and others having a wide host range (generalists). Molecular determinants of pathogen’s host range remain poorly understood. Secreted proteins of generalist pathogens are expected to have a broader range of intermolecular interactions (i.e., higher promiscuity) compared with their specialist counterparts. We hypothesize that this increased promiscuity of generalist secretomes may be based on an elevated content of primitive amino acids and intrinsically disordered regions, as these features are known to increase protein flexibility and interactivity. Here, we measure the proportion of primitive amino acids and percentage of intrinsically disordered residues in secreted, membrane, and cytoplasmic proteins from pathogens with different host specificity. Supporting our prediction, there is a significant general enrichment for primitive amino acids and intrinsically disordered regions in proteins from generalists compared to specialists, particularly among secreted proteins in prokaryotes. Our findings support our hypothesis that secreted proteins' amino acid composition and disordered content influence the pathogens' host range.

scholarly journals Analysis of Heterodimeric “Mutual Synergistic Folding”-Complexes

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (20) ◽  
pp. 5136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mentes ◽  
Magyar ◽  
Fichó ◽  
Simon
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Composition ◽  
Acid Composition ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered Proteins ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Disordered Proteins ◽  
Subunit Interactions ◽  
Amino Acid Compositions ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered ◽  
Β Sheet

Several intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are capable to adopt stable structures without interacting with a folded partner. When the folding of all interacting partners happens at the same time, coupled with the interaction in a synergistic manner, the process is called Mutual Synergistic Folding (MSF). These complexes represent a discrete subset of IDPs. Recently, we collected information on their complexes and created the MFIB (Mutual Folding Induced by Binding) database. In a previous study, we compared homodimeric MSF complexes with homodimeric and monomeric globular proteins with similar amino acid sequence lengths. We concluded that MSF homodimers, compared to globular homodimeric proteins, have a greater solvent accessible main-chain surface area on the contact surface of the subunits, which becomes buried during dimerization. The main driving force of the folding is the mutual shielding of the water-accessible backbones, but the formation of further intermolecular interactions can also be relevant. In this paper, we will report analyses of heterodimeric MSF complexes. Our results indicate that the amino acid composition of the heterodimeric MSF monomer subunits slightly diverges from globular monomer proteins, while after dimerization, the amino acid composition of the overall MSF complexes becomes more similar to overall amino acid compositions of globular complexes. We found that inter-subunit interactions are strengthened, and additionally to the shielding of the solvent accessible backbone, other factors might play an important role in the stabilization of the heterodimeric structures, likewise energy gain resulting from the interaction of the two subunits with different amino acid compositions. We suggest that the shielding of the β-sheet backbones and the formation of a buried structural core along with the general strengthening of inter-subunit interactions together could be the driving forces of MSF protein structural ordering upon dimerization.

scholarly journals Proteome-wide signatures of function in highly diverged intrinsically disordered regions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taraneh Zarin ◽  
Bob Strome ◽  
Alex N Nguyen Ba ◽  
Simon Alberti ◽  
Julie D Forman-Kay ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Sequences ◽  
Functional Annotations ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered Regions ◽  
Molecular Features ◽  
Primary Amino ◽  
Function Relationship ◽  
Disordered Regions

AbstractIntrinsically disordered regions make up a large part of the proteome, but the sequence-to-function relationship in these regions is poorly understood, in part because the primary amino acid sequences of these regions are poorly conserved in alignments. Here we use an evolutionary approach to detect molecular features that are preserved in the amino acid sequences of orthologous intrinsically disordered regions. We find that most disordered regions contain multiple molecular features that are preserved, and we define these as “evolutionary signatures” of disordered regions. We demonstrate that intrinsically disordered regions with similar evolutionary signatures can rescue functionin vivo,and that groups of intrinsically disordered regions with similar evolutionary signatures are strongly enriched for functional annotations and phenotypes. We propose that evolutionary signatures can be used to predict function for many disordered regions from their amino acid sequences.

Predicting Interactions Between Pathogen and Human Proteins Based on the Relation Between Sequence Length and Amino Acid Composition

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saud Alguwaizani ◽  
Shulei Ren ◽  
De-Shuang Huang ◽  
Kyungsook Han
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Composition ◽  
Yersinia Pestis ◽  
Acid Composition ◽  
Sequence Length ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Human Ppis ◽  
Svm Model

Aim: Both bacterial infection and viral infection involve a large number of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) between a pathogen and its target host. Background: So far, many computational methods have focused on predicting PPIs within the same species rather than PPIs across different species. Methods: From the extensive analysis of PPIs between Yersinia pestis bacteria and humans, we recently discovered an interesting relation; a linear relation between amino acid composition and sequence length was observed in many proteins involved in PPIs. We have built a support vector machine (SVM) model, which predicts PPIs between human and bacteria using two feature types derived from the relation. The two feature types used in the SVM are the amino acid composition group (AACG) and the difference in amino acid composition between host and pathogen proteins. Result: The SVM model achieved high performance in predicting bacteria-human PPIs. The model showed an accuracy of 96%, sensitivity of 94%, and specificity of 98% in predicting PPIs between humans and Yersinia pestis, in which there is a strong relation between amino acid composition and sequence length. The SVM model was also tested in predicting PPIs between human and viruses, which include Ebola, HCV, and SARSCoV-2, and showed a good performance. Conclusion: The feature types identified in our study are simple yet powerful in predicting pathogen-human PPIs. Although preliminary, our method will be useful for finding unknown target host proteins or pathogen proteins and designing in vitro or in vivo experiments.

scholarly journals Scrambled Prion Domains Form Prions and Amyloid

2004 ◽  
Vol 24 (16) ◽  
pp. 7206-7213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric D. Ross ◽  
Ulrich Baxa ◽  
Reed B. Wickner
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Composition ◽  
Acid Composition ◽  
Sequence Composition ◽  
Amino Terminal ◽  
Rich Domain ◽  
The Many ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

ABSTRACT The [URE3] prion of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a self-propagating amyloid form of Ure2p. The amino-terminal prion domain of Ure2p is necessary and sufficient for prion formation and has a high glutamine (Q) and asparagine (N) content. Such Q/N-rich domains are found in two other yeast prion proteins, Sup35p and Rnq1p, although none of the many other yeast Q/N-rich domain proteins have yet been found to be prions. To examine the role of amino acid sequence composition in prion formation, we used Ure2p as a model system and generated five Ure2p variants in which the order of the amino acids in the prion domain was randomly shuffled while keeping the amino acid composition and C-terminal domain unchanged. Surprisingly, all five formed prions in vivo, with a range of frequencies and stabilities, and the prion domains of all five readily formed amyloid fibers in vitro. Although it is unclear whether other amyloid-forming proteins would be equally resistant to scrambling, this result demonstrates that [URE3] formation is driven primarily by amino acid composition, largely independent of primary sequence.

scholarly journals Proteome-wide signatures of function in highly diverged intrinsically disordered regions

eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taraneh Zarin ◽  
Bob Strome ◽  
Alex N Nguyen Ba ◽  
Simon Alberti ◽  
Julie D Forman-Kay ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Sequences ◽  
Functional Annotations ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered ◽  
Intrinsically Disordered Regions ◽  
Molecular Features ◽  
Primary Amino ◽  
Function Relationship ◽  
Disordered Regions

Intrinsically disordered regions make up a large part of the proteome, but the sequence-to-function relationship in these regions is poorly understood, in part because the primary amino acid sequences of these regions are poorly conserved in alignments. Here we use an evolutionary approach to detect molecular features that are preserved in the amino acid sequences of orthologous intrinsically disordered regions. We find that most disordered regions contain multiple molecular features that are preserved, and we define these as ‘evolutionary signatures’ of disordered regions. We demonstrate that intrinsically disordered regions with similar evolutionary signatures can rescue function in vivo, and that groups of intrinsically disordered regions with similar evolutionary signatures are strongly enriched for functional annotations and phenotypes. We propose that evolutionary signatures can be used to predict function for many disordered regions from their amino acid sequences.

scholarly journals A Promiscuous Prion: Efficient Induction of [URE3] Prion Formation by Heterologous Prion Domains

Genetics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 183 (3) ◽  
pp. 929-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carley D. Ross ◽  
Blake R. McCarty ◽  
Michael Hamilton ◽  
Asa Ben-Hur ◽  
Eric D. Ross
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acid ◽  
Amino Acid Composition ◽  
Acid Composition ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Amyloid Formation ◽  
Wild Type ◽  
Amyloid Aggregates ◽  
Efficient Induction

The [URE3] and [PSI+] prions are the infections amyloid forms of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae proteins Ure2p and Sup35p, respectively. Randomizing the order of the amino acids in the Ure2 and Sup35 prion domains while retaining amino acid composition does not block prion formation, indicating that amino acid composition, not primary sequence, is the predominant feature driving [URE3] and [PSI+] formation. Here we show that Ure2p promiscuously interacts with various compositionally similar proteins to influence [URE3] levels. Overexpression of scrambled Ure2p prion domains efficiently increases de novo formation of wild-type [URE3] in vivo. In vitro, amyloid aggregates of the scrambled prion domains efficiently seed wild-type Ure2p amyloid formation, suggesting that the wild-type and scrambled prion domains can directly interact to seed prion formation. To test whether interactions between Ure2p and naturally occurring yeast proteins could similarly affect [URE3] formation, we identified yeast proteins with domains that are compositionally similar to the Ure2p prion domain. Remarkably, all but one of these domains were also able to efficiently increase [URE3] formation. These results suggest that a wide variety of proteins could potentially affect [URE3] formation.

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