Channels for the transportation of water molecules in enzymes influence active site solvation and catalysis. Herein we present a protocol for the engineering of these additional catalytic motifs based on in silico computer modeling and experiments. This will enhance our understanding of the influence of solvent dynamics on enzyme catalysis.
Enzyme catalysis evolved in an aqueous environment. The influence of solvent dynamics on catalysis is, however, currently poorly understood and usually neglected. The study of water dynamics in enzymes and the associated thermodynamical consequences is highly complex and has involved computer simulations, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments, and calorimetry. Water tunnels that connect the active site with the surrounding solvent are key to solvent displacement and dynamics. The protocol herein allows for the engineering of these motifs for water transport, which affects specificity, activity and thermodynamics. By providing a biophysical framework founded on theory and experiments, the method presented herein can be used by researchers without previous expertise in computer modeling or biophysical chemistry. The method will advance our understanding of enzyme catalysis on the molecular level by measuring the enthalpic and entropic changes associated with catalysis by enzyme variants with obstructed water tunnels. The protocol can be used for the study of membrane-bound enzymes and other complex systems. This will enhance our understanding of the importance of solvent reorganization in catalysis as well as provide new catalytic strategies in protein design and engineering.
Water constitutes a cornerstone for the chemistry of life1. Water patterns and solvation of enzyme active sites affect both the enthalpy and entropy of ligand binding1,2 and catalysis3 in a highly complex fashion extending beyond the hydrophobic effect2,3. NMR4, calorimetry2 and molecular modeling of solvated proteins have been used to shed light on the role of explicit water molecules in providing a driving force for ligand association5-8, specificity and activity2,9,10. Herein we present a unique methodology for the experimental assessment of the thermodynamical impact of solvent displacement on enzyme catalysis (Figure 1). Our combined strategy is based on using computer simulations in concert with enzyme engineering and thermodynamical analysis (Figure 1). This allows for shedding additional light on the impact of solvent dynamics on catalysis, which is currently poorly understood.
Stabilizing enthalpic interactions, provided by water-mediated hydrogen bonds in solvated enzyme active sites, can be offset by entropic penalties1. These entropic costs are associated with the decrease in the degrees of freedom displayed by water molecules confined within protein cavities, as compared to water in bulk5. The release of ordered water molecules can thus provide an entropic driving force for ligand association1 and catalysis3. A key aspect of solvent dynamics is the displacement of water molecules between the interior of proteins and the exterior solvent4. The accompanying changes in activation energy, enthalpy, and entropy11 are not completely understood on the molecular level. By obstructing individual tunnels responsible for the transport of water in enzymes, the importance of solvent dynamics and its contribution to the activation energy can be evaluated (Figure 1). Moreover, by performing one-pot kinetic experiments at different temperatures, the relative thermodynamical activation parameters of several substrates can be extracted from a reduced number of experiments (Figure 1, right). Our interdisciplinary method is validated for complex membrane-bound triterpene cyclase enzymes that generate polycyclic terpenes of high importance for life12. The protocol allows for the recovery of high amounts of membrane protein (10-20 mg/L) using a standard centrifuge.
Although enzymes evolved in water, the role of the solvent in promoting catalysis is usually neglected. In addition to protein dynamics13,14 that shape pre-organized active sites with electrostatic complementarity to the transition state15, water dynamics could be of high importance for efficient enzyme catalysis. By forging several interdisciplinary techniques, our aim is to facilitate the highly complex study of water dynamics and thermodynamics. Making these tools more accessible to the scientific community will lead to the development of new strategies in enzyme engineering and protein design for altered activities and specificities.
1. In Silico Computer Modeling
2. Model of Active Site Solvation and Water Access
3. In Silico Enzyme Engineering to Modify Water Patterns and Water Dynamics
4. Expression of Mutated Genes
5. Membrane Extraction Using a Normal Centrifuge and Protein Purification
6. Kinetics
7. Extraction and Thermodynamic Analysis
The importance of water dynamics in enzymatic polycyclization catalysis is implicated by in silico analysis and subsequent visualization of detected tunnels (using the script in Supplementary Code File 2). Following section 3 of the protocol, S168 is found to be a "hot spot" amino acid residue lining one of the tunnels in the triterpene cyclase enzyme from Alicyclobacillus acidocaldarius (Figure 1, middle left). By introducing the mutation S168F in silico, the tunnel is obstructed as seen by visual inspection (Figure 1, bottom left).
The reaction rate for the formation of polycyclic products displayed by the triterpene cyclase enzyme is highly sensitive to temperature (Figure 2A). Following the protocol (section 4-7), it is found that the apparent kcat/KM displayed by wild-type enzyme for the formation of pentacyclic products increases fiftyfold when the temperature is raised by 25 °C (Figure 2A). Blocking individual tunnels by introducing a single point mutation has a significant effect on the experimentally determined absolute apparent kcat/KM values, as well as on their temperature dependence (Figure 2A).
From the experimentally determined kinetic parameters, linear thermodynamical plots are generated by equation 3 and by following section 6-7 of the protocol for single substrate kinetics (Figure 2B). The very large changes in activation entropy and enthalpy observed for variants harboring blocked tunnels implies a key role for water dynamics in promoting the polycyclization cascade (Figure 2C, calculations based on Figure 2B). Moreover, variants with altered water tunnels display an altered Gibbs free energy of activation (ΔG‡=ΔH‡–T*ΔS‡, Figure 2B-C). For instance, at 303 K the S168F tunnel variant displays a Gibbs free energy of activation of 14 kcal/mol compared to 16 kcal/mol for the wild-type enzyme.
Following the protocol in section 7, equation 4 allows for the calculation of apparent kcat/KM values for additional substrates from one-pot kinetic experiments (Figure 3A). Moreover, a linear thermodynamic plot (Figure 3B) can be constructed by running the competition essay at different temperatures (equation 5). In analogy to single substrate kinetics, the relative activation enthalpy and entropy for additional substrates compared to a reference compound are readily accessible from the intercept and slope of the linear fits to the experimental data. Absolute values of thermodynamic parameters of activation can be assessed from arithmetic addition by using thermodynamic data associated with the reference compound (equation 6). Using the protocol herein, generated results clearly show that membrane enzyme variants with blocked water tunnels display fundamentally different thermodynamic parameters of activation for substrates of different sizes (Figure 3C).
Figure 1. Protocol summary: in silico computer modeling in concert with experimental protein design and thermodynamic analysis allows for an enhanced understanding of the influence of solvent dynamics on enzyme catalysis. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Figure 2. Thermodynamic parameters of activation of wild-type and tunnel variants from single substrate kinetics. (A) Apparent kcat/KM values obtained from experimental data and by using equations 1 and 2. (B) Thermodynamical analysis using transition state theory and linear fit of the experimental data to equation 3. (C) Thermodynamic parameters of activation calculated from the plots in (B). The prefolded squalene substrate is shown with bonds formed/broken as dotted lines. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Figure 3. Thermodynamic parameters of activation of wild-type and tunnel variants for different substrates. (A) Relative kcat/KM values obtained from one-pot kinetics by using equation 4. (B) Thermodynamical plots of the kinetic data at different temperatures using equation 5. (C) Absolute thermodynamic parameters of activation calculated by equation 6 and by using the substrate squalene in Figure 2 as reference. Bonds formed/broken in the substrates are shown as dotted lines. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
The most critical steps in achieving high quality experimental thermodynamical data for wild-type membrane enzyme and tunnel variants are: 1) generation of the computer model; 2) homogeneously purified proteins; 3) emulsified substrate stocks; 4) control of temperature during kinetics; 5) extraction of reaction mixtures using internal standard.
The generation of the computer model is greatly facilitated by the use of a software with a user-friendly interface that supports a variety of platforms. Hence, this protocol is premised on the YASARA modeling suite16 to make our strategy accessible even to modeling non-experts. A computer model for water tunnel identification should ideally be based on a crystal structure of the enzyme of interest24. For this purpose, the wealth of crystal structures available in the protein data bank is very beneficial. In our experience, a key aspect in the successful preparation of templates for tunnel identification is to keep crystallographic waters. It is of equal importance to use a solvated enzyme box when performing molecular dynamics simulations, which can be run on a normal computer. The triterpene cyclase from Alicyclobacillus acidocaldarius is stable in water during MD simulations3. However, keeping crystallographic detergents and/or using cell membrane mimics would perhaps be required for potentially unstable enzymes to allow for extended MD simulations. It is envisioned that the minimized crystal structure of highly challenging targets could provide important mechanistic insight using the protocol, although this would not capture dynamical aspects of tunnel organization.
CAVER19 in the basic mode, with a single or a limited number of snapshots as input, can be used by non-experts on a standard laptop. Based on our experience3, tunnels with a bottleneck radius (i.e., the radius at the most narrow point) smaller than 1 Å can be highly relevant for water, especially if crystallographic water molecules reside within the predicted tunnel (Figure 1, middle left). On the other hand, a larger bottleneck radius could imply a tunnel for the transport of the substrate in and out of the active site10. The script in Supplementary Code File 2 can be used by non-experts for the visualization of predicted tunnels. Future experiments will reveal whether homology models will be of sufficiently high resolution to allow for the atomistic study of water networks and dynamics. Shedding light on how performing molecular dynamics simulations, with and without a ligand present in the active site, influences the process of tunnel identification would also be of importance.
Kinetics of membrane proteins can constitute a formidable challenge25. The protocol herein is based on a simple membrane extraction protocol to obtain the membrane enzyme without the use of expensive equipment, such as an ultracentrifuge. The use of gel filtration as a final polishing step removes potential residual membrane particles and allows for defining an appropriate detergent environment25.
A key aspect in achieving reproducible kinetic results from the protocol is to emulsify the substrate stock solution by ultrasonication. Simple vortexing of hydrophobic substrates diluted in the reaction buffer gives inhomogeneous substrate-detergent mixtures. The pipetting of non-emulsified substrate solutions leads to irreproducible concentrations (confirmed by quantitative GC), which prevents accurate determination of initial rates. In contrast, the pipetting of properly emulsified stock solutions should result in linear regression analysis of initial rates with R2 in the range of 0.98-0.99. Another important aspect of hydrophobic substrates is the apparent substrate solubility and availability in the substrate-detergent mixtures. In fact, it was not possible to saturate the triterpene cyclase with the reference substrate squalene. For this reason apparent kcat/KM values are presented herein which could contain contributions from both binding and chemistry. However, it has been shown that chemistry is rate limiting for kcat/KM for the polycyclization cascade conducted by triterpene cyclases3.
It is of high importance to verify the actual temperature inside a reaction glass vial with an external thermometer. Still, linear fits can be poorer for variants with essential constant apparent kcat/KM values at different temperatures. This is stressed for the S168F variant herein (Figure 2A) with an activation enthalpy close to zero (Figure 2B and 2C). Very small temperature-dependent changes in apparent kcat/KM, could induce uncertainty in the observed activation entropy ΔS‡ (i.e., the intercept in the linear plots in Figure 2B). In principle, the observed activation entropy could also be affected by a different abundance of active enzymes for different variants, which would not be detected by measuring the protein concentration. It is expected that experimental errors are reduced when mixing several substrates in one pot. This is because all the different substrates interact with the same amount of enzyme under these circumstances (equation 4). The use of an extraction solvent spiked with an internal standard is important to account for differences during extraction and/or GC-injection.
Transition state theory has been successfully used in enzymology26. This important theoretical framework was originally developed for unimolecular reactions in the gas phase. However, it has been shown that enzymes mainly work by lowering the classical activation energy barrier26. The transmission coefficient assumed to be one herein could affect the measured activation enthalpy and/or entropy. The contribution of tunneling, and other non-classical effects such as recrossing of the transition state, can roughly contribute 1,000-fold to catalysis26 corresponding to about 4 kcal/mol in energy. It can be seen that the activation entropy displayed by the wild-type enzyme (16 kcal/mol at 328 K, Figure 2C) is much larger than such non-classical effects caused by a non-uniform transmission coefficient. The impact of the transmission coefficient should decrease when comparing thermodynamic parameters of activation for wild type and tunnel variants using the protocol.
The Gibbs free energy of activation (ΔG‡) is composed of both an enthalpic (ΔH‡) and an entropic (-T*ΔS‡) term. Solvent reorganization in enzymes during catalysis can influence both parameters. The present protocol is expected to facilitate the study of these phenomena by assembling a toolbox of relevant and user friendly in silico computational tools with the necessary biophysical experimental framework. The method is envisaged to be useful for studying a plethora of enzymatic processes, including catalysis by membrane-bound enzymes.
The authors have nothing to disclose.
The Swedish Research Council (VR) is greatly acknowledged for financial support of this work by a young investigator grant #621-2013-5138. The PDC Center for High Performance Computing at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology is acknowledged for providing computational support.
YASARA | YASARA Biosciences | http://www.yasara.org/ | Molecular modeling and simulation program |
CAVER | CaverSoft | http://caver.cz/ | Tool for analysis of tunnels in proteins, free license for academic use |
Bradford Ultra | Expedeon | BFU1L, BFU05L | Protein quantitation in solutions containing up to 1% detergent |
Potter-Elvehjem homogenizer | VWR | 432-0205, 432-0217 | Homogenization of frozen cell pellet |
Protease Inhibitor Cocktail Tablets | Roche | 4693159001 | Protease inhibitor |
Centrifugal Filter Units | Millipore | UFC901008 | Centrifugal filter units for the concentration of proteins, MWCO 10 kDa |
Thermomixer | Eppendorf | 5382000015 | Thermomixer for sample incubation |