We have shown the conversion of an amyloid fiber forming nucleation pathway of polyglutamine (polyGln) to a non-nucleated pathway, generating nanospherical amyloid particles. This is achieved by engineering an intermolecular salt bridge interaction between the positively charged lysine and the negatively charged glutamate residues, in two polyGln rich peptides. The mechanism of their formation ...

Xylanase J (XynJ) from alkaliphilic Bacillus sp. 41M-1 is an alkaline xylanase. The crystal structure has been solved with XynJ. Improvement of the alkaliphily of XynJ was attempted by amino acid substitutions. Reinforcing the characteristic salt bridge in the catalytic cleft and introducing excess Arg residues on the protein surface shifted the optimum pH of the wild-type enzyme from 8.5 to 9.5.

Inherited forms of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, e.g. familial Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome and fatal familial insomnia, segregate with specific point mutations of the prion protein. It has been proposed that the pathologically relevant Asp178Asn (D178N) mutation might destabilize the structure of the prion protein because of the loss of the Arg1...

Most nucleoside diphosphate kinases (NDPKs) are hexamers. The C-terminal tail interacting with the neighboring subunits is crucial for hexamer stability. In the NDPK from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mt) this tail is missing. The quaternary structure of Mt-NDPK is essential for full enzymatic activity and for protein stability to thermal and chemical denaturation. We identified the intersubunit ...

Salt bridges in lipid bilayers play a decisive role in the dynamic assembly and downstream signaling of the natural killer and T-cell receptors. Here, we describe the identification of an inter-subunit salt bridge in the membrane within yet another key component of the immune system, the peptide-loading complex (PLC). The PLC regulates cell surface presentation of self-antigens and antigenic pe...

A UV light-induced photodimerization of 5-[(imidazol-1-yl)methyl]uracil using glutamate- and aspartate-derived cyclic dipeptides (2,5-diketopiperazines - DKPs) as templates was investigated. Dual salt bridge formation between imidazole side chains and carboxylic acids resulted in the preorganization of the uracil monomers and the preferential formation of the cis-syn photodimer.

The conformational states of the zwitterionic form of the pentapeptide Met-enkephalin were explored with the use of explicit solvent molecular dynamics (MD). The N and C termini are ionized, as appropriate to polar solvent conditions, and consequently, there is a competition between open forms driven by polar solvation of the ammonium and carboxylate groups and closed forms driven by their salt...

Metachromatic leukodystrophy is a lysosomal storage disorder caused by the deficiency of arylsulphatase A. We describe the functional consequences of three mis-sense mutations in the arylsulphatase A gene (Asp-335-Val, Arg-370-Trp and Arg-370-Gln), affecting an apparent intramolecular Asp-335 to Arg-370 salt bridge, and interpret the effects and clinical consequences on the basis of the three-d...

Lactose permease is an integral membrane protein that uses the cell membrane's proton gradient for import of lactose. Based on extensive biochemical data and a substrate-bound crystal structure, intermediates involved in lactose/H(+) co-transport have been suggested. Yet, the transport mechanism, especially the coupling of protonation states of essential residues and protein conformational chan...

The chaperonin GroEL-GroES, a machine that helps proteins to fold, cycles through a number of allosteric states, the T state, with high affinity for substrate proteins, the ATP-bound R state, and the R" (GroEL-ADP-GroES) complex. Here, we use a self-organized polymer model for the GroEL allosteric states and a general structure-based technique to simulate the dynamics of allosteric transitions ...