Highlights from the summer 2017 ISMB seminar programme

Regular readers of this blog will know that the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology (ISMB) coordinates the research efforts in the Department of Biological Sciences at Birkbeck and two departments – Chemistry and Structural and Molecular Biology – at neighbouring University College London. Research in the participating departments is coordinated through six core research centres, and many grants, PhD studentships and experimental facilities are held in common.

Since 2010, too, these departments’ seminar programmes have been consolidated into termly series of ISMB seminars, giving the Institute’s researchers and students the chance to hear world-class scientists present their work. Most of each term’s seminars are centred round a theme, with recent themes including bioinformatics; the molecular basis of infectious disease; and, in the most recent series, ‘beyond signalling’. This post briefly describes two seminars in this series, both from researchers based in London and both closely concerned with disease mechanisms.

Paul Freemont holds a chair in protein crystallography at Imperial College, London. His group has solved the structure of several proteins linked to cancer, including a domain called the ‘RING finger’ that is found in the breast cancer susceptibility protein BRCA1. His talk to the ISMB, however, concerned a research interest that he shares with the Institute’s head, Gabriel Waksman: the membrane-bound protein complexes through which Gram negative bacteria secrete toxins and other molecules across the double bacterial cell wall and out of the cell. These bacteria have evolved at least six such ‘molecular machines’, with yet another found in mycobacteria such as M. tuberculosis. Waksman’s work in elucidating the structure of the Type IV system is covered extensively in section 11 of the PPS course (‘Structures of Membrane Proteins’).

Freemont’s seminar described the Type VI secretion system (T6SS), which was first identified as recently as 2006 in Vibrio cholerae (as its name suggests, the causative agent of cholera). The function of the T6SS is to eject proteins from the interior of the bacterial cell into an adjacent cell, which may be either bacterial or eukaryotic. Freemont’s lab mainly studies these systems in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic pathogen that causes infections mainly in people who are already chronically ill, such as cystic fibrosis patients and those with severe burns.

This secretion system has been described as a ‘molecular syringe’. Its structure resembles that of the tail of a bacteriophage – a type of virus that affects bacteria – but it is inverted, with the tip of the tail pointing away from the bacterial cell wall and towards its target cells. In some species, the same secretion systems can target both eukaryotic cells and other bacteria. The system consists of a long sheathed tube, built up from many protein subunits, that is large enough to be easily viewed using electron tomography and that is tipped by a spike through which the protein to be delivered is ejected. Energy for cargo delivery is provided by the contraction of the tube, with a single contraction storing the energy equivalent of 1600 molecules of ATP. The whole structure is dynamic; it is assembled only when needed and disassembled after the cargo has been delivered, allowing the cycle to begin again.

Although the T6SS can sometimes act as a cell-to-cell ‘killing machine’, as in Vibrio cholerae, protein delivery to the target cell will often have rather more subtle effects, with Pseudomonas aeruginosa a case in point. This rod-shaped Gram negative pathogen uses three distinctly different type 6 systems, encoded on separate operons, to secrete effector proteins that interfere with the host immune system. Freemont and his group have solved the structures of several P. aeruginosa T6SS components using X-ray crystallography, throwing more light on their phage-like mechanism of action. Structures of an accessory protein (TagJ) and the ATPase that catalyses sheath disassembly (ClpV) were all published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2014; some other component structures are yet to be published. TagJ is now known to interact both with ClpV, an AAA+ ATPase, and with components of the sheath, and this interaction allows the rapid disassembly that is required for the complete system to be reset. Each ATPase only interacts with the components from its own operon. Further structural studies, using high-resolution electron microscopy as well as X-ray crystallography, are expected to elucidate further details of these complex molecular machines and to suggest ways in which they might one day be targeted by the novel antimicrobial drugs that we so desperately need.

The second London-based seminar speaker, Miriam Dwek from the University of Westminster, had a somewhat unorthodox beginning to her research career at Oxford University’s first spin-off company, Oxford Glycosystems (now, after many mergers, part of pharma giant UCB). She has maintained her interests in glycobiology (the biology and biochemistry of sugars and polysaccharides) and its application to human disease – particularly breast cancer – into and throughout her academic research career.

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancer types, with 400,000 new cases occurring each year in Europe alone. Breast tumours can be divided into many subtypes with different genetic and biochemical profiles; although some are now easily treated with surgery, radiotherapy and/or drugs, others are often fatal (if perhaps after many years). Generally speaking, tumours are tractable when they are confined to breast tissue and the disease only becomes difficult to treat once it has spread. All cancer types metastasise in a particular pattern; breast cancers tend to spread first into nearby lymph nodes and then to the lungs, brain or bones.

Metastasis is a complex, multi-step process, and selecting the optimum treatment for each patient depends on detecting whether and how her tumour will metastasise as early as possible. Changes in the concentration of some biological molecules in body fluids have been associated with tumour growth and development, and these biomarkers can be used as easily-measurable surrogates of cancer development. One particularly well-known example is the prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a glycoprotein found in semen that is elevated in prostate cancer. No such clear-cut examples exist in breast cancer, but many subtler biochemical changes are known to occur. Dwek and her group have been exploring differences in protein glycosylation patterns between breast tumours and normal breast cells.

Glycosylation is one of the most common post-translational modifications of amino acids (link is to PPS section 2). There are two basic types; one or (almost always) more monosaccharides can be bonded to the oxygen atoms of serine and threonine side chains (O-glycosylation) or to asparagine’s side chain nitrogen (N-glycosylation). The addition of the first residue to the amino acid and the subsequent extension of the chain are catalysed by enzymes in the transferase class. In O-glycosylation, in particular, the patterns of residues added to the glycan ‘branches’ differ between healthy breast epithelial cells and breast tumour cells, and this, in turn, can aid the process of cell adhesion (binding cells together), which is essential for tumour metastasis. Cadherins are glycoproteins that have important roles in cell adhesion, and Dwek’s group used glycoproteomics techniques to identify this as a potential biomarker of metastatic breast cancer. She considers that it is likely to be particularly useful for detecting metastasis in patients with estrogen receptor positive tumours and vascular invasion.

Other topics presented by leading researchers in this ISMB seminar series included nuclear receptors, collagen-binding proteins and protein targeting and translocation. The seminar programme will return in October, and I will doubtless be returning to it again in this blog.

Protein Machines in the Molecular Arms Race

Birkbeck’s Science Week 2015 was held from Monday 23 to Thursday 26 March and included three evenings of public talks by senior researchers. The first two lectures, on the Tuesday, were given by two of the college’s most distinguished women scientists: Helen Saibil from the Department of Biological Sciences and Karen Hudson-Edwards from Earth and Planetary Sciences; they were billed together as a ‘Women in Science Evening’.

The lectures were all introduced by the Dean of the Faculty of Science, Nicholas Keep who described Saibil, a close colleague, as “our most eminent female scientist”. She came to Birkbeck from Canada via a PhD at King’s College London under the supervision of Nobel laureate Maurice Wilkins and post-doctoral work at Oxford.

Since arriving here in the 1980s she has built up an internationally renowned structural biology lab, focusing in particular on the technique of electron microscopy. She has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 2006 and of the Academy of Medical Sciences since 2009.

Saibil began her lecture by explaining that proteins can act as little machines, performing mechanical tasks that are essential for the maintenance of life. Her group has been interested for some time in proteins that can punch holes in the walls of cells. This allows the cell contents to leak out in a damaging process known as lysis, and it also allows toxins to enter the cells. These proteins can therefore be thought of as powerful weapons, and they are deployed on both sides of a ‘molecular arms race’: by pathogens and by the immune systems of humans and other animals.

Most soluble proteins fold into a single stable structure that tries, as far as possible, to keep their hydrophobic (“water-hating”) parts – the side chains of certain amino acids – in the interior of the protein, with the hydrophilic (“water-loving”) side chains on the outside, in contact with the watery environment inside or outside cells.

Pore-forming proteins, however, have a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ like identity: they can form two distinctly different shapes, one as individual, soluble molecules and the other when they associate with each other into membrane-bound rings to form cylindrical pores. These structures, and the conformational change between them, are remarkably similar in proteins from bacteria and from the immune system.

Pore-forming toxins have been found in types of bacteria that are responsible for some deadly human diseases, including meningitis and pneumonia. The structure of a monomeric form of one of these proteins in solution was first solved in 1998, using X-ray crystallography. However, large complexes of many protein molecules are more readily solved by electron microscopy, particularly when those complexes are embedded in membranes.

In 2005 Saibil and her group described structures of the pore-forming toxin pneumolysin from Streptococcus pneumoniae, in complex with a model cell membrane. They found that the proteins formed two distinctly different ring-shaped structures. Initially, they formed into a ring sitting on top of the membrane, which was termed the pre-pore; then they changed shape to burrow part of each protein deep into the membrane and form the pore itself. Each monomer in the pre-pore had a structure that was similar to that of the molecule in solution, but they underwent large structural changes to form the pore.

Schematic illustration of how suilysin, a bacterial cholesterol-dependent cytolysin, drills holes in cell membranes. Image © Adrian Hodel, London Centre for Nanotechnology

Most structures solved by electron microscopy are at lower resolution than those solved by X-ray crystallography, and it is not possible to trace the positions of individual atoms at lower resolutions (e.g. worse than 3 A). Saibil and her colleagues were able to interpret the structure of the proteins making up the pore by fitting pieces of the X-ray structure of the isolated molecule into their electron density.

They found a dramatic change in structure, with the tall, thin protein structure collapsing into an arch and a helical region stretching out to form a long, extended beta hairpin. It is these hairpins that join together to form the walls of the pore. The process of pore forming therefore has three stages: firstly the toxin molecules bind to the surface of their target cells, then they associate into the circular pre-pores and finally they change shape in a concerted manner, punching holes in the cell membranes by ejecting a disc of membrane, letting other toxins in and cell contents out.

Saibil then turned the focus of her talk from attack by bacteria to the human immune system’s defence. Natural killer (NK) cells are specialised lymphocytes (white blood cells) that kill virally-infected and cancerous cells in the bloodstream. They kill on contact with their target cells by releasing a toxic protein into those cells that stimulates those target cells to commit suicide in a process known as programmed cell death or apoptosis. We have only recently learned that the mechanism through which the NK cells work is very similar to the mechanism of the bacterial pore-forming toxins.

Natural killer cells express a protein called perforin that has a similar structure in solution to the bacterial pneumolysin. Although there is very little sequence similarity between these proteins – there is only one amino acid conserved throughout all the known bacterial and vertebrate proteins of this family, a glycine at a critical position for the conformational change – the structures are similar enough to suggest that the proteins all once had a common ancestor.

Saibil and her colleagues used electron microscopy to discover that this protein forms a pore through a similar mechanism to pneumolysin: the helical region that unfolds into the beta hairpin to form the pore forms the core of the molecular machine and is largely unchanged between the structures. There are some differences between the structures, however; in particular, there is no need for the perforin structure to ‘collapse’ as the molecule has ‘arms’ that are long enough to form the hairpin and punch the hole without bending into an arch.

The mechanism through which the NK cells kill their target cells is now quite well understood. When the two cells come into contact they form a temporary structure called an immune synapse that allows the pore to form and proteases called granzymes, which induce apoptosis, to enter the target cells. This YouTube video illustrates the natural killer cells’ mechanism of action, and this one shows a detailed view of the immune synapse. Other, similar proteins have been identified in oyster mushrooms; these form more rigid structures that are easier to work with. Saibil’s group and their collaborators have been able to solve the structure of this protein in intermediate stages of pore formation and are beginning to gain an understanding of exactly how it unfolds.

The pore of the oyster mushroom protein pleurotolysin, a member of the pneumolysin family. Image © Natalya Lukoyanova and Helen Saibil, from Lukoyanova et al., PLoS Biology 13:e1002049

Mutations in perforin that prevent it from functioning cause a rare disease called haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, which is almost invariably fatal in childhood. Understanding the mechanism of action of this important family of protein ‘weapons’ in both attack and defence may help find a cure for this devastating condition, as well as for some commoner disorders of the immune system and important infectious diseases.

This post is cross-posted from the Birkbeck Events blog.

PPS students can learn much more about electron microscopy by taking the second-year module Techniques in Structural Molecular Biology to complete the MSc.

BCA Winter Meeting: Structures of Supramolecular Assemblies

The British Crystallographic Association (BCA) is a national organisation set up to support all types of crystallography in the UK. It is affiliated to the International Union of Crystallography and has five special interest groups, one of which, the Biological Structures Group, is devoted to the study, by crystallography, of proteins and other biological macromolecules. One of the Biological Structure Group's main activities is its annual Winter Meeting, which conventionally takes place just before the Christmas break. This is always well attended by students and post-docs; the speakers, however, are generally senior scientists presenting some of their most exciting recent research in protein structure.

The 2011 BCA Winter Meeting was held at the Diamond Light Source, the country's national synchroton facility (which is located at Harwell, near Didcot in Oxfordshire. When it opened in 1997 it was the largest scientific facility to be built in the UK for over thirty years. Synchrotons like Diamond generate highly intense, monochromatic (single-wavelength) beams of electromagnetic radiation that are used for many types of scientific experiment, including X-rays for crystallography. The theory behind how X-ray diffraction is used to solve the structuresof proteins is not covered in PPS, but it is in both the courses that can be taken for the second year of the MSc: fairly briefly in the general Techniques for Structural Molecular Biology course and very extensively in a specialist course.

This meeting took "Structures of Supramolecular Assemblies" as its theme and featured nine distinguished speakers, discussing complex structures, biological mechanisms and protein-protein interactions. And the first speaker was none other than the head of the Department of Biological Sciences at Birkbeck, Professor Gabriel Waksman. His ground-breaking work on the structure and mechanism of fibres that form at the outer membrane of bacteria such as E. coli to attach to the host cells has been discussed previously on this blog (e.g. in June 2011) and so will not be described in more detail here.

Waksman's talk was followed by two more describing proteins and protein complexes that are embedded in the membranes of bacterial cells. The first of these was given by Colin Kleanthous from the University of York, who described proteins involved in signalling through porins, proteins that form pores in the outer membranes of Gram negative bacteria. Porins were the first transmembrane proteins to be discovered where the membrane-spanning region forms a beta barrel rather than a bundle of alpha helices. Very many alpha-helical membrane proteins pass signals into cells from their environment, with the signal arising when ligand binding triggers the receptor to either dimerise or make a subtle change in its structure (conformation). Colicins are protein antibiotics that are synthesised by bacteria, often to kill very similar bacteria that occupy the same ecological niche. They do this by "parasitizing" the porins through which nutrients enter the target bacteria, a particularly difficult task as porins act as filters that generally allow only "nutrient-sized" molecules (less than about 600Da) to enter cells. Kleanthous described the structures and mechanisms of the "outer membrane translocation" domains of several colicins bound to porins; his group is now trying to solve the structures of intact colicin-porin complexes using both crystallography and electron microscopy.

Leo Sazanov from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge then described the structure of respiratory complex I, which is embedded in the bacterial inner membrane.. This is the first enzyme in the respiratory chain, and it is found in mitochondria as well as bacteria: the respiratory complex I in human mitochondria has been implicated in the pathology of Parkinson's disease.  The bacterial enzyme complex is smaller and simpler than the human one and is often used as a model system. Sazanov and his group crystallised the complete complex from Thermus thermophilus, a "thermophilic" bacterium that can live in extremely hot conditions. Proteins from thermophilic bacteria are often more stable and easier to crystallise than their equivalents in other species. The complete structure was found to contain no fewer than 63 transmembrane helices, 14 in each of three similar subunits. Sazanov discovered that this protein's mechanism involves a quite substantial conformational change between its oxidised and reduced form; an analogy with coupling rods has led the protein to be described as the "steam engine of the cell". It featured, in similar terms on the front cover of the issue of Nature in which the structure was described (Efremov et al. (2010), Nature 465, 441-5).

Nature cover illustrating the structure of respiratory complex I

About 5% of all proteins in an "average" bacterium are synthesised in response to heat or other stress signals. Stresssosomes are large multi-protein complexes found in bacteria and that control this stress response through the release of another protein, known as the sigma factor. Rick Lewis from the University of Newcastle described how the overall structure of a stressosome from Bacillus subtilis has been solved by electron microscopy and structures of some of the individual components by crystallography.  He is using these structures to explore the mechanism through which the stressosome senses the presence of stress conditions. Although several pieces of the stress response pathway still remain to be discovered, his group has shown how the system could respond to differences in levels of light and oxygen (the latter through the presence of a globin domain in one of the stressome proteins), how it could regulate the production of diguanylate cyclase, and how the system is re-set through the action of a serine/threonine phosphatase (the structure of which was solved at Diamond).

Helen Walden of Cancer Research UK described how her group's structural studies are shedding light on the mechanism of a DNA repair pathway that is damaged in Fanconi anaemia, a rare genetic disorder that causes, among other things, a greatly increased susceptibility to one form of leukaemia. This repair pathway, which fixes cross-links in DNA, is triggered by the single ubiquitinylation of a DNA repair protein. (This is the fusion of a small protein known as ubiquitin with a target protein.) The process is triggered when cross-links cause DNA to stop replicating; the first step is the assembly, in the nucleus, of eight proteins into a "core complex" in the nucleus. The core complex then activates another protein, known as FANCL, and this catalyses the fusion of ubiquitin with the DNA repair protein, activating it. The structure of FANCL was recently solved in Walden's group by Ambrose Cole, who is now a post-doc at Birkbeck (PDB 3ZQS). Interestingly, the structure of this protein is not the beta-propellor that was predicted by sequence analysis; instead, it contains two domains similar to the ubiquitin conjugating enzyme UBC. Mutations that abolish ubiquitin binding are known to cause disease.

These are only a few highlights of  a fascinating day's science. Other, no less interesting, structures presented there included several viral proteins: the HIV integrase bound to some of its inhibitors, presented by Peter Cherepanov (Imperial College London); the nucleoprotein from the virus that causes Lassa fever, described by Chang-jing Dong (University of St. Andrew's); and the NS1 protein from the influenza virus, described by Phil Kerry, also from St. Andrew's