Staphylococcal nuclease structure

Tucker, P.W., Hazen, E.E., Colton, F.A. Staphylococcal nuclease reviewed a prototypic study in contemporary enzymology. III. Correlation of fhe three-dimensional structure with the mechanisms of enzymatic action. Mol. Cell. Biochem. 

Shortle has focused on the unfolded state for more than a decade, leading up to his recent demonstration using residual dipolar couplings that staphylococcal nuclease retains global structure in 8 M urea. His chapter on The Expanded Denatured State sets the stage. Dunker etal. then explore the complementary world of disordered regions within... 

In this review, NMR analysis of the denatured state of staphylococcal nuclease is briefly reviewed in nontechnical language. Most of the work has come from the author s laboratory over the past eight years. The initial experiments, which only measure local structural parameters, reported small amounts of persisting helical structure, two turns, and indirect evidence for perhaps a three-strand beta meander. When applied to the denatured state in 6 M urea, the same experiments indicated that most of these features are lost. 

In a further study, Taniuchi et al. (1977) have shown that in the association of overlapping fragments of staphylococcal nuclease, two different species of active enzyme are formed. On the basis of the products of limited proteolysis, structures for the two species were deduced. In one case a structure is proposed in which fragment 1-126 assumes native-like structure over the sequence 1-48, and all of fragment 50-149 assumes native-like structure. In the other case the structure is one in which fragment 1-126 assumes native-like structure over the sequence 1-110, while that part of fragment 50-149 in the sequence interval 111-149 assumes native-like structure. The interest of these results is enhanced by the finding that the two active species initially form in relative concentrations substantially different from their equilibrium concentrations. Thus, both a mobile equilibrium and substantial kinetic control of the early products are evident. Taniuchi et al. did not reach a clear-cut mechanistic conclusion from their studies. 

Cotton, F. A., Hazen, E. E., Jr., and Legg, M. J. (1979). Staphylococcal nuclease Proposed mechanism of action based on structure of enzyme-thymidine 3, 5 -bisphosphate-calcium ion complex at 1.5-A resolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 76, 2551-2555. 

In addition to interest in this enzyme because of its catalytic characteristics, a considerable body of information has accumulated on staphylococcal nuclease as a protein molecule. Its relatively small size, the absence of covalent cross-linkages, and its behavior upon binding a variety of ligands have made it an ideal model substance for the study of various aspects of protein chemistry including X-ray crystallography. These investigations are reviewed in the present chapter and in Chapter 7 by Cotton and Hazen, this volume, on the three-dimensional structure (19). 

Apart from important similarities in the endo- and exonucleolytic properties of staphylococcal nuclease and other well-studied phosphodiesterases (67), those from snake venom and spleen, the basic structural substrate elements for these enzymes appear to be quite different... 

Fig. 2). The staphylococcal enzyme may appear to be more akin in its mode of action to the spleen enzyme because they both hydrolyze DNA and RNA to 3 -nucleotides, whereas the venom enzyme releases 5 -nucleotides. However, their mode of action and specificity are quite different, and the structural requirements of the staphylococcal enzyme substrates are perhaps more nearly similar to those of the venom enzyme. The principal difference is that the staphylococcal enzyme cleaves the diester bond between the phosphate and the 5 -carbon of the sugar, whereas the venom enzyme cleaves on the other side of the phosphate, that is, between the phosphate and the nonspecific hydroxylic component of the diester bond. In contrast to both spleen and venom diesterases, the primary product released by staphylococcal nuclease hydrolysis is a derivative bearing a hydroxyl group (on the 5 position) rather than a phosphoryl group. Therefore, the 3 -phosphoryl product formed from polynucleotide hydrolysis is a secondary consequence of such cleavage. 

Abstract. Walter Kauzmann stated in a review of protein thermodynamics that volume and enthalpy changes are equally fundamental properties of the unfolding process, and no model can be considered acceptable unless it accounts for the entire thermodynamic behaviour (Nature 325 763-764, 1987). While the thermodynamic basis for pressure effects has been known for some time, the molecular mechanisms have remained rather mysterious. We, and others in the rather small field of pressure effects on protein structure and stability, have attempted since that time to clarify the molecular and physical basis for the changes in volume that accompany protein conformational transitions, and hence to explain pressure effects on proteins. The combination of many years of work on a model system, staphylococcal nuclease and its large numbers of site-specific mutants, and the rather new pressure perturbation calorimetry approach has provided for the first time a fundamental qualitative understanding of AV of unfolding, the quantitative basis of which remains the goal of current work. 

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