Designing bacterial signaling interactions with coevolutionary landscapes

PLoS One. 2018 Aug 20;13(8):e0201734. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201734. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Selecting amino acids to design novel protein-protein interactions that facilitate catalysis is a daunting challenge. We propose that a computational coevolutionary landscape based on sequence analysis alone offers a major advantage over expensive, time-consuming brute-force approaches currently employed. Our coevolutionary landscape allows prediction of single amino acid substitutions that produce functional interactions between non-cognate, interspecies signaling partners. In addition, it can also predict mutations that maintain segregation of signaling pathways across species. Specifically, predictions of phosphotransfer activity between the Escherichia coli histidine kinase EnvZ to the non-cognate receiver Spo0F from Bacillus subtilis were compiled. Twelve mutations designed to enhance, suppress, or have a neutral effect on kinase phosphotransfer activity to a non-cognate partner were selected. We experimentally tested the ability of the kinase to relay phosphate to the respective designed Spo0F receiver proteins against the theoretical predictions. Our key finding is that the coevolutionary landscape theory, with limited structural data, can significantly reduce the search-space for successful prediction of single amino acid substitutions that modulate phosphotransfer between the two-component His-Asp relay partners in a predicted fashion. This combined approach offers significant improvements over large-scale mutations studies currently used for protein engineering and design.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Bacillus subtilis / cytology*
  • Bacillus subtilis / enzymology
  • Bacillus subtilis / genetics*
  • Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins / chemistry
  • Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins / genetics
  • Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins / metabolism
  • Directed Molecular Evolution / methods*
  • Escherichia coli / cytology*
  • Escherichia coli / enzymology
  • Escherichia coli / genetics*
  • Escherichia coli Proteins / chemistry
  • Escherichia coli Proteins / genetics
  • Escherichia coli Proteins / metabolism
  • Models, Molecular
  • Multienzyme Complexes / chemistry
  • Multienzyme Complexes / genetics
  • Multienzyme Complexes / metabolism
  • Mutation
  • Protein Conformation
  • Signal Transduction*

Substances

  • Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins
  • Escherichia coli Proteins
  • Multienzyme Complexes
  • envZ protein, E coli

Grants and funding

Work at the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (Grants PHY-1427654), the Welch Foundation (Grant C-1792), and the NSF INSPIRE award (MCB-1241332). Research performed at the University of California was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (Grants MCB-1212312). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.