Atomic view of the histidine environment stabilizing higher-pH conformations of pH-dependent proteins - CEA - Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives Access content directly
Journal Articles Nature Communications Year : 2015

Atomic view of the histidine environment stabilizing higher-pH conformations of pH-dependent proteins

Nuria Taberner
  • Function : Author
Pierre Legrand
Florian Meneau
Cristelle Mériadec
Thomas Bizien
Franck Artzner

Abstract

External stimuli are powerful tools that naturally control protein assemblies and functions. For example, during viral entry and exit changes in pH are known to trigger large protein conformational changes. However, the molecular features stabilizing the higher pH structures remain unclear. Here we elucidate the conformational change of a self-assembling peptide that forms either small or large nanotubes dependent on the pH. The sub-angstrom high-pH peptide structure reveals a globular conformation stabilized through a strong histidine-serine H-bond and a tight histidine-aromatic packing. Lowering the pH induces histidine protonation, disrupts these interactions and triggers a large change to an extended b-sheet-based conformation. Re-visiting available structures of proteins with pH-dependent conformations reveals both histidine-containing aromatic pockets and histidine-serine proximity as key motifs in higher pH structures. The mechanism discovered in this study may thus be generally used by pH-dependent proteins and opens new prospects in the field of nanomaterials.
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Dates and versions

cea-01201915 , version 1 (18-09-2015)

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Céline Valéry, Stéphanie Deville-Foillard, Christelle Lefebvre, Nuria Taberner, Pierre Legrand, et al.. Atomic view of the histidine environment stabilizing higher-pH conformations of pH-dependent proteins. Nature Communications, 2015, 6 (1), pp.7771. ⟨10.1038/ncomms8771⟩. ⟨cea-01201915⟩
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