Matching Items (5)
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Description
Membrane proteins are very important for all living cells, being involved in respiration, photosynthesis, cellular uptake and signal transduction, amongst other vital functions. However, less than 300 unique membrane protein structures have been determined to date, often due to difficulties associated with the growth of sufficiently large and well-ordered crystals.

Membrane proteins are very important for all living cells, being involved in respiration, photosynthesis, cellular uptake and signal transduction, amongst other vital functions. However, less than 300 unique membrane protein structures have been determined to date, often due to difficulties associated with the growth of sufficiently large and well-ordered crystals. This work has been focused on showing the first proof of concept for using membrane protein nanocrystals and microcrystals for high-resolution structure determination. Upon determining that crystals of the membrane protein Photosystem I, which is the largest and most complex membrane protein crystallized to date, exist with only a hundred unit cells with sizes of less than 200 nm on an edge, work was done to develop a technique that could exploit the growth of the Photosystem I nanocrystals and microcrystals. Femtosecond X-ray protein nanocrystallography was developed for use at the first high-energy X-ray free electron laser, the LCLS at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, in which a liquid jet would bring fully hydrated Photosystem I nanocrystals into the interaction region of the pulsed X-ray source. Diffraction patterns were recorded from millions of individual PSI nanocrystals and data from thousands of different, randomly oriented crystallites were integrated using Monte Carlo integration of the peak intensities. The short pulses ( 70 fs) provided by the LCLS allowed the possibility to collect the diffraction data before the onset of radiation damage, exploiting the diffract-before-destroy principle. At the initial experiments at the AMO beamline using 6.9- Å wavelength, Bragg peaks were recorded to 8.5- Å resolution, and an electron-density map was determined that did not show any effects of X-ray-induced radiation damage. Recently, femtosecond X-ray protein nanocrystallography experiments were done at the CXI beamline of the LCLS using 1.3- Å wavelength, and Bragg reflections were recorded to 3- Å resolution; the data are currently being processed. Many additional techniques still need to be developed to explore the femtosecond nanocrystallography technique for experimental phasing and time-resolved X-ray crystallography experiments. The first proof-of-principle results for the femtosecond nanocrystallography technique indicate the incredible potential of the technique to offer a new route to the structure determination of membrane proteins.
ContributorsHunter, Mark (Author) / Fromme, Petra (Thesis advisor) / Wolf, George (Committee member) / Levitus, Marcia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Description
Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) using X-ray free-electron laser sources is an emerging method with considerable potential for time-resolved pump-probe experiments. Here we present a lipidic cubic phase SFX structure of the light-driven proton pump bacteriorhodopsin (bR) to 2.3 Å resolution and a method to investigate protein dynamics with modest sample requirement.

Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) using X-ray free-electron laser sources is an emerging method with considerable potential for time-resolved pump-probe experiments. Here we present a lipidic cubic phase SFX structure of the light-driven proton pump bacteriorhodopsin (bR) to 2.3 Å resolution and a method to investigate protein dynamics with modest sample requirement. Time-resolved SFX (TR-SFX) with a pump-probe delay of 1 ms yields difference Fourier maps compatible with the dark to M state transition of bR. Importantly, the method is very sample efficient and reduces sample consumption to about 1 mg per collected time point. Accumulation of M intermediate within the crystal lattice is confirmed by time-resolved visible absorption spectroscopy. This study provides an important step towards characterizing the complete photocycle dynamics of retinal proteins and demonstrates the feasibility of a sample efficient viscous medium jet for TR-SFX.
ContributorsNogly, Przemyslaw (Author) / Panneels, Valerie (Author) / Nelson, Garrett (Author) / Gati, Cornelius (Author) / Kimura, Tetsunari (Author) / Milne, Christopher (Author) / Milathianaki, Despina (Author) / Kubo, Minoru (Author) / Wu, Wenting (Author) / Conrad, Chelsie (Author) / Coe, Jesse (Author) / Bean, Richard (Author) / Zhao, Yun (Author) / Bath, Petra (Author) / Dods, Robert (Author) / Harimoorthy, Rajiv (Author) / Beyerlein, Kenneth R. (Author) / Rheinberger, Jan (Author) / James, Daniel (Author) / Deponte, Daniel (Author) / Li, Chufeng (Author) / Sala, Leonardo (Author) / Williams, Garth J. (Author) / Hunter, Mark S. (Author) / Koglin, Jason E. (Author) / Berntsen, Peter (Author) / Nango, Eriko (Author) / Iwata, So (Author) / Chapman, Henry N. (Author) / Fromme, Petra (Author) / Frank, Matthias (Author) / Abela, Rafael (Author) / Boutet, Sebastien (Author) / Barty, Anton (Author) / White, Thomas A. (Author) / Weierstall, Uwe (Author) / Spence, John (Author) / Neutze, Richard (Author) / Schertler, Gebhard (Author) / Standfuss, Jorg (Author) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / Biodesign Institute (Contributor) / Applied Structural Discovery (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor)
Created2016-08-22
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Description
CTB-MPR is a fusion protein between the B subunit of cholera toxin (CTB) and the membrane-proximal region of gp41 (MPR), the transmembrane envelope protein of Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1), and has previously been shown to induce the production of anti-HIV-1 antibodies with antiviral functions. To further improve the design

CTB-MPR is a fusion protein between the B subunit of cholera toxin (CTB) and the membrane-proximal region of gp41 (MPR), the transmembrane envelope protein of Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1), and has previously been shown to induce the production of anti-HIV-1 antibodies with antiviral functions. To further improve the design of this candidate vaccine, X-ray crystallography experiments were performed to obtain structural information about this fusion protein. Several variants of CTB-MPR were designed, constructed and recombinantly expressed in Escherichia coli. The first variant contained a flexible GPGP linker between CTB and MPR, and yielded crystals that diffracted to a resolution of 2.3 Å, but only the CTB region was detected in the electron-density map. A second variant, in which the CTB was directly attached to MPR, was shown to destabilize pentamer formation. A third construct containing a polyalanine linker between CTB and MPR proved to stabilize the pentameric form of the protein during purification. The purification procedure was shown to produce a homogeneously pure and monodisperse sample for crystallization. Initial crystallization experiments led to pseudo-crystals which were ordered in only two dimensions and were disordered in the third dimension. Nanocrystals obtained using the same precipitant showed promising X-ray diffraction to 5 Å resolution in femtosecond nanocrystallography experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The results demonstrate the utility of femtosecond X-ray crystallography to enable structural analysis based on nano/microcrystals of a protein for which no macroscopic crystals ordered in three dimensions have been observed before.
ContributorsLee, Ho-Hsien (Author) / Cherni, Irene (Author) / Yu, HongQi (Author) / Fromme, Raimund (Author) / Doran, Jeffrey (Author) / Grotjohann, Ingo (Author) / Mittman, Michele (Author) / Basu, Shibom (Author) / Deb, Arpan (Author) / Dorner, Katerina (Author) / Aquila, Andrew (Author) / Barty, Anton (Author) / Boutet, Sebastien (Author) / Chapman, Henry N. (Author) / Doak, R. Bruce (Author) / Hunter, Mark (Author) / James, Daniel (Author) / Kirian, Richard (Author) / Kupitz, Christopher (Author) / Lawrence, Robert (Author) / Liu, Haiguang (Author) / Nass, Karol (Author) / Schlichting, Ilme (Author) / Schmidt, Kevin (Author) / Seibert, M. Marvin (Author) / Shoeman, Robert L. (Author) / Spence, John (Author) / Stellato, Francesco (Author) / Weierstall, Uwe (Author) / Williams, Garth J. (Author) / Yoon, Chun Hong (Author) / Wang, Dingjie (Author) / Zatsepin, Nadia (Author) / Hogue, Brenda (Author) / Matoba, Nobuyuki (Author) / Fromme, Petra (Author) / Mor, Tsafrir (Author) / ASU Biodesign Center Immunotherapy, Vaccines and Virotherapy (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Biodesign Institute (Contributor) / Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor)
Created2014-08-20
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Description
Mix-and-inject serial crystallography (MISC) is a technique designed to image enzyme catalyzed reactions in which small protein crystals are mixed with a substrate just prior to being probed by an X-ray pulse. This approach offers several advantages over flow cell studies. It provides (i) room temperature structures at near atomic

Mix-and-inject serial crystallography (MISC) is a technique designed to image enzyme catalyzed reactions in which small protein crystals are mixed with a substrate just prior to being probed by an X-ray pulse. This approach offers several advantages over flow cell studies. It provides (i) room temperature structures at near atomic resolution, (ii) time resolution ranging from microseconds to seconds, and (iii) convenient reaction initiation. It outruns radiation damage by using femtosecond X-ray pulses allowing damage and chemistry to be separated. Here, we demonstrate that MISC is feasible at an X-ray free electron laser by studying the reaction of M. tuberculosis ß-lactamase microcrystals with ceftriaxone antibiotic solution. Electron density maps of the apo-ß-lactamase and of the ceftriaxone bound form were obtained at 2.8 Å and 2.4 Å resolution, respectively. These results pave the way to study cyclic and non-cyclic reactions and represent a new field of time-resolved structural dynamics for numerous substrate-triggered biological reactions.
ContributorsKupitz, Christopher (Author) / Olmos, Jose L. (Author) / Holl, Mark (Author) / Tremblay, Lee (Author) / Pande, Kanupriya (Author) / Pandey, Suraj (Author) / Oberthur, Dominik (Author) / Hunter, Mark (Author) / Liang, Mengning (Author) / Aquila, Andrew (Author) / Tenboer, Jason (Author) / Calvey, George (Author) / Katz, Andrea (Author) / Chen, Yujie (Author) / Wiedorn, Max O. (Author) / Knoska, Juraj (Author) / Meents, Alke (Author) / Majriani, Valerio (Author) / Norwood, Tyler (Author) / Poudyal, Ishwor (Author) / Grant, Thomas (Author) / Miller, Mitchell D. (Author) / Xu, Weijun (Author) / Tolstikova, Aleksandra (Author) / Morgan, Andrew (Author) / Metz, Markus (Author) / Martin Garcia, Jose Manuel (Author) / Zook, James (Author) / Roy Chowdhury, Shatabdi (Author) / Coe, Jesse (Author) / Nagaratnam, Nirupa (Author) / Meza-Aguilar, Domingo (Author) / Fromme, Raimund (Author) / Basu, Shibom (Author) / Frank, Matthias (Author) / White, Thomas (Author) / Barty, Anton (Author) / Bajt, Sasa (Author) / Yefanov, Oleksandr (Author) / Chapman, Henry N. (Author) / Zatsepin, Nadia (Author) / Nelson, Garrett (Author) / Weierstall, Uwe (Author) / Spence, John (Author) / Schwander, Peter (Author) / Pollack, Lois (Author) / Fromme, Petra (Author) / Ourmazd, Abbas (Author) / Phillips, George N. (Author) / Schmidt, Marius (Author) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Biodesign Institute (Contributor) / Applied Structural Discovery (Contributor)
Created2016-12-15
Description

Photosynthesis, a process catalysed by plants, algae and cyanobacteria converts sunlight to energy thus sustaining all higher life on Earth. Two large membrane protein complexes, photosystem I and II (PSI and PSII), act in series to catalyse the light-driven reactions in photosynthesis. PSII catalyses the light-driven water splitting process, which

Photosynthesis, a process catalysed by plants, algae and cyanobacteria converts sunlight to energy thus sustaining all higher life on Earth. Two large membrane protein complexes, photosystem I and II (PSI and PSII), act in series to catalyse the light-driven reactions in photosynthesis. PSII catalyses the light-driven water splitting process, which maintains the Earth’s oxygenic atmosphere. In this process, the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) of PSII cycles through five states, S0 to S4, in which four electrons are sequentially extracted from the OEC in four light-driven charge-separation events. Here we describe time resolved experiments on PSII nano/microcrystals from Thermosynechococcus elongatus performed with the recently developed technique of serial femtosecond crystallography. Structures have been determined from PSII in the dark S1 state and after double laser excitation (putative S3 state) at 5 and 5.5 Å resolution, respectively. The results provide evidence that PSII undergoes significant conformational changes at the electron acceptor side and at the Mn4CaO5 core of the OEC. These include an elongation of the metal cluster, accompanied by changes in the protein environment, which could allow for binding of the second substrate water molecule between the more distant protruding Mn (referred to as the ‘dangler’ Mn) and the Mn3CaOx cubane in the S2 to S3 transition, as predicted by spectroscopic and computational studies. This work shows the great potential for time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography for investigation of catalytic processes in biomolecules.

ContributorsKupitz, Christopher (Author) / Basu, Shibom (Author) / Grotjohann, Ingo (Author) / Fromme, Raimund (Author) / Zatsepin, Nadia (Author) / Rendek, Kimberly (Author) / Hunter, Mark (Author) / Shoeman, Robert L. (Author) / White, Thomas A. (Author) / Wang, Dingjie (Author) / James, Daniel (Author) / Yang, Jay-How (Author) / Cobb, Danielle (Author) / Reeder, Brenda (Author) / Sierra, Raymond G. (Author) / Liu, Haiguang (Author) / Barty, Anton (Author) / Aquila, Andrew L. (Author) / Deponte, Daniel (Author) / Kirian, Richard (Author) / Bari, Sadia (Author) / Bergkamp, Jesse (Author) / Beyerlein, Kenneth R. (Author) / Bogan, Michael J. (Author) / Caleman, Carl (Author) / Chao, Tzu-Chiao (Author) / Conrad, Chelsie (Author) / Davis, Katherine M. (Author) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor)
Created2014-09-11