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Understanding the machinery that decides proteins' fate by tagging them with ubiquitin is an important goal of structural biology. Benirschke et al. (2010) have solved the structure of human E4B (or UFD2a), a U-box-containing protein that functions both as an E3 Ub ligase and as an E4 polyUb chain elongation factor.
To gain a molecular description of how muscles can be activated by mechanical stretch, we have solved the structure of the calcium-loaded F1 isoform of troponin C (TnC) from Lethocerus and characterized its interactions with troponin I (TnI). We show that the presence of only one calcium cation in the fourth EF hand motif is sufficient to induce an open conformation in the C-terminal lobe of F1 TnC,...
The yfhJ gene is part of the isc operon, which encodes the machinery devoted to assemble iron-sulfur clusters in prokaryotes. Its transcript is a small acidic protein that binds the desulfurase IscS, which is essential in iron-specific metabolic pathways. To understand its cellular role, we have characterized the structure of YfhJ in solution and its interactions with potential cellular partners....
FMRP, whose lack of expression causes the X-linked fragile X syndrome, is a modular RNA binding protein thought to be involved in posttranslational regulation. We have solved the structure in solution of the N-terminal domain of FMRP (NDF), a functionally important region involved in multiple interactions. The structure consists of a composite fold comprising two repeats of a Tudor motif followed...
AXH is a protein module identified in two unrelated families that comprise the transcriptional repressor HBP1 and ataxin-1 (ATX1), the protein responsible for spinocerebellar ataxia type-1 (SCA1). SCA1 is a neurodegenerative disorder associated with protein misfolding and formation of toxic intranuclear aggregates. We have solved the structure in solution of monomeric AXH from HBP1. The domain adopts...
CyaY is the bacterial ortholog of frataxin, a small mitochondrial iron binding protein thought to be involved in iron sulphur cluster formation. Loss of frataxin function leads to the neurodegenerative disorder Friedreich's ataxia. We have solved the solution structure of CyaY and used the structural information to map iron binding onto the protein surface. Comparison of the behavior of wild-type...
Z band alternately spliced PDZ-containing protein (ZASP) is a sarcomere Z disk protein expressed in human cardiac and skeletal muscle that is thought to be involved in a dominant familial dilated cardiomyopathy. The N-terminal PDZ domain of ZASP interacts with the C terminus of α-actinin-2, the major component of the Z disk, probably by forming a ternary complex with titin Z repeats. We have determined...
The crystal structure of the endonuclease, ribonuclease III, in complex with a double-stranded RNA fragment reveals the mechanism that allows for switching between two functional forms of the enzyme.
Background: Lesions in the gene for frataxin, a nuclear-encoded mitochondrial protein, cause the recessively inherited condition Friedreich's ataxia. It is thought that the condition arises from disregulation of mitochondrial iron homeostasis, with concomitant oxidative damage leading to neuronal death. Very little is, as yet, known about the biochemical function of frataxin.Results: Here, we show...
Background: The giant muscle protein titin forms a filament which spans half of the sarcomere and performs, along its length, quite diverse functions. The region of titin located in the sarcomere I-band is believed to play a major role in extensibility and passive elasticity of muscle. In the I-band, the titin sequence consists mostly of repetitive motifs of tandem immunoglobulin-like (Ig) modules...
Background: Titin is a gigantic protein located in the thick filament of vertebrate muscles. The putative functions of titin range from interactions with myosin and other muscle proteins to a role in muscle recoil. Analysis of its complete sequence has shown that titin is a multi-domain protein containing several copies of modules of 100 amino acids each. These are thought to belong to the fibronectin...
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