Mapping the conformational landscape of a dynamic enzyme by multitemperature and XFEL crystallography
- University of California, San Francisco, United States
- Cornell University, United States
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, United States
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, United States
- Stanford University, United States
Abstract
Determining the interconverting conformations of dynamic proteins in atomic detail is a major challenge for structural biology. Conformational heterogeneity in the active site of the dynamic enzyme cyclophilin A (CypA) has been previously linked to its catalytic function, but the extent to which the different conformations of these residues are correlated is unclear. We monitored the temperature dependences of these alternative conformations with eight synchrotron datasets spanning 100-310 K. Multiconformer models show that many alternative conformations in CypA are populated only at 240 K and above, yet others remain populated or become populated at 180 K and below. These results point to a complex evolution of conformational heterogeneity between 180-240 K that involves both thermal deactivation and solvent-driven arrest of protein motions in the crystal. Together, our multitemperature analyses and XFEL data motivate a new generation of temperature- and time-resolved experiments to structurally characterize the dynamic underpinnings of protein function.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Stephen C Harrison, Harvard Medical School, United States
Version history
- Received: March 19, 2015
- Accepted: September 29, 2015
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 30, 2015 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: December 23, 2015 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2015, Keedy et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Mapping the conformational landscape of a dynamic enzyme by multitemperature and XFEL crystallography
eLife 4:e07574.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.07574
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