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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 279, Issue 4, 2841-2845, January 23, 2004
Small-angle X-ray Scattering-based Three-dimensional Reconstruction of the Immunogen KLH1 Reveals Different Oxygen-dependent Conformations*![]() ![]() From the Institut für Molekulare Biophysik, Universität Mainz, D-55099 Mainz, Germany
Received for publication, August 13, 2003 , and in revised form, October 17, 2003.
For decades the respiratory protein keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH1) from the marine gastropod Megathura crenulata has been used widely as a potent immunostimulant, useful hapten carrier, and valuable agent in the treatment of bladder carcinoma. Although much information on the immunological properties of KLH1 is available, biochemical and structural data are still incomplete. Small-angle x-ray scattering revealed the existence of two conformations, an oxy state being slightly more compact than the deoxy state. Based on small-angle scattering curves, a newly developed Monte Carlo algorithm delivered a surface representation of proteins. The massive changes of the surfaces of reconstructed didecameric KLH1 molecules are explained as a twist of the two non-covalently associated decameric half-molecules. Upon oxygenation, the KLH1 molecule becomes longer and skinnier. This study provides the first real evidence how a molluscan hemocyanin changes conformation during an allosteric transition.
Hemocyanins are respiratory proteins found extracellularly in the hemolymph of arthropods and molluscs. Although the structures of arthropod and mollusc hemocyanins are different, the oxygen is reversibly bound at the active site in the same side-on coordination between the two copper atoms (1, 2). Up to 160 active sites are cooperatively coupled when binding oxygen with the highest Hill coefficient observed for natural biomolecules (3-5). The molecular basis especially in molluscan hemocyanin is still not known. One of the most prominent hemocyanin from mollusc, KLH,1 is that from the marine gastropod keyhole limpet Megathura crenulata. KLH has widely been used as an immunostimulant, hapten carrier, and valuable agent in the treatment of cancer. However, not much is known regarding the immunological (6-10) and biochemical as well as structural properties (11-16).
Two different hemocyanin isoforms, KLH1 and KLH2, have been found in the hemolymph of the keyhole limpet M. crenulata with molecular masses of
Sample PreparationKLH1 was kindly provided by Dr. J. Markl (University of Mainz). After purification according to the procedure described by Harris et al. (12), we verified the didecameric state of the molecules by transmission electron microscopy. The deoxygenation of the KLH1 samples was performed with nitrogen gas in a glove box. Because of the high oxygen affinity of KLH1, the partial oxygen pressure had to be kept below 1 torr to reach complete deoxygenation within 45 min. We judged the deoxygenation to be complete when the oxygen-dependent absorbance at 340 nm disappeared. During this procedure, the protein concentration increased by evaporation of some water. To work with the same concentration for the oxygenated sample, an aliquot of the deoxygenated protein solution was reoxygenated in a small test tube within minutes. The protein concentration was measured by light absorption at 278 nm. Using the extinction coefficient of 0.62 cm-1 mg-1 ml for KLH1, the protein concentration was determined to be 6.3 mg/ml for both the oxygenated and deoxygenated samples.
Scattering Experiments and Data TreatmentThe small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) data were measured at the beamline B1 of the HASYLAB synchrotron facility at the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) at distances of 3.6 and 1.8 m. A wavelength Monte Carlo annealing algorithm-based Three-dimensional Reconstruction of Small-angle Scattering Curves (MCSAS)In this section, we give a short description of the MCSAS algorithm as it was applied to the reconstruction of the KLH1 structure. In more detail, the procedure is described elsewhere (27). Applying the algorithm to simulated scattering curves, we were able to reconstruct excellent low resolution models (27).
At first, a cylinder was created obeying D5 symmetry and with dimensions that certainly include the KLH1 molecule with dimensions as obtained by electron microscopy. An asymmetric unit was filled with an electron density in the form of point charges (scattering points) randomly distributed. The whole cylinder was created by applying D5 symmetry operations. As it was shown previously (28), the small-angle scattering intensity of a molecule can be calculated effectively from a random sample of the excess density. In contrast to a regular grid of densely packed scattering spheres (29, 30), the random arrangement of scattering points allows any symmetry restriction. No systematic holes or overlaps are generated at the interfaces among the asymmetric units. To minimize statistical density fluctuations on a length scale above the resolution limit, the mean distance between neighboring points was adjusted to one-third of the resolution of the data defined as dmin = 2
After scaling the modeled intensities to the experimental intensities (Iexp), the discrepancy factor
. Currently, in a cyclic Monte Carlo procedure, new configurations were created, gradually improving the correspondence between the calculated and measured intensities. A point was selected by chance, its scattering amplitude was inverted (if f = 1 then f = 0 and vice versa), and ![]() 2, the change of 2, was calculated. To allow the algorithm to search in the total configuration space, consistent with the experimental data, and not to become stuck in local minima, a criterion similar to the one used by Metropolis et al. (31) was applied to the new configuration. A new configuration with ![]() 2 0 was accepted with probability p = 1. For ![]() 2 > 0, the probability for accepting the configuration is then given by P = exp(-![]() 2/a). The parameter a formally corresponds to an annealing temperature. It was gradually decreased from 0.3 to 0.03 during one run. After equilibration typically reached with a total of 50,000 iterations, 2 did not further decrease in the mean but was still fluctuating. Five configurations of the molecular model were saved, each after an additional 100,000 iterations. The whole procedure was repeated 20 times/data set with different seeds of the random number generator, giving a total of 100 models for oxygenated and deoxygenated KLH1. The speed of searching in the total configuration space was increased by randomizing the distribution of points and their scattering amplitudes from time to time. Prominent features of the KLH1 molecule were present in all of the individual models, but at a smaller scale artificial density, fluctuations showed up. To reduce the statistical fluctuations, all of the individual models were superim-posed and averaged density distributions were calculated for oxygenated and deoxygenated KLH1 molecules. Because small-angle data contain no information regarding the handedness of the molecule, each model was also tested with inverted coordinates and two enantimorphous classes were created and averaged individually. To compare the two different structures for oxygenated and deoxygenated KLH1, correlation coefficients were calculated for the two different combinations of the enantimorphous class averages. Based on these values, the more similar enantiomers were selected for comparison of oxygenated and deoxygenated KLH1 in Fig. 2. This procedure compares only the relative handedness of the two different enantimorphic classes. The absolute handedness was selected in such a way that the models, at least the model for deoxygenated KLH1 (compare "Results" and "Discussion"), are more similar to the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) reconstruction (11).
The mean standard deviations for the averaged density distributions and the difference density were derived in the following manner. First, for each grid point, a standard deviation i was calculated from the deviations of the individual densities i,m of the M models from the mean density as shown in Equation 3a.
For the mean standard deviation
The mean ± S.D of the difference density (Fig. 2e) was calculated by error propagation from the
We would like to mention that the above definitions of error levels are conservative choices. Using Equation 3b, all of the grid points contributing to the original model volume and not only grid points with density greater zero would lower the
We investigated a solution of KLH1 by SAXS in the absence and presence of molecular oxygen. The minima and maxima in the scattering curves are less developed for the oxygenated form, and they are shifted to higher q values by 1-2% (Fig. 1a). In the case of cylindrically shaped molecules, deeper minima correspond to a hollower cylinder, whereas shallow minima indicate a more filled cylinder. Thus, a comparison of the experimental intensities of deoxy-KLH1 and oxy-KLH1 revealed changes in the quaternary structure upon oxygenation, indicating that oxy-KLH1 is more compact. The difference between the scattering curves of the oxy- and deoxy-KLH1 is shown in Fig. 1b. The differences are well out of the range of experimental error. As a thorough test, the differences in the scattering curves were diminished by a least squares fit of one scattering curve (oxy) to the other (deoxy) with a variable contribution of scattering from protein, buffer, empty cuvette, and background as fit parameters. The differences in the scattering curves of the oxygenated and deoxygenated protein decreased only slightly by this fit, thus they can be regarded as highly significant.
The demonstrated existence of different conformational states of KLH was expected from the fact that KLH with its 160 oxygen binding centers binds dioxygen, cooperatively serving as an oxygen carrier in vivo (14).
The radii of gyration were determined from the SAXS data to be 163.8 ± 0.3 and 164.7 ± 0.3 Å for oxygenated and deoxygenated KLH1, respectively. These values are in good agreement with the values recently determined by small-angle neutron scattering, 163.7 ± 0.5 Å for oxygenated and 165.0 ± 0.6 Å for deoxygenated KLH1 (32). Again, KLH1 seems to be slightly more compact in the oxygenated than in the deoxygenated state. Indirect Fourier transformation of the intensities gave distance distribution functions with a maximum size of dmax for KLH1 of
To be able to compare direct experimental results from SAXS with the three-dimensional model obtained by TEM of stained KLH1 samples (11), we used the electron density distribution of the TEM model (kindly provided by Orlova et al. (11)) to calculate the radius of gyration, distance distribution function, and small-angle scattering intensity for the TEM model. Standard procedures were applied for these calculations (24, 26). The scattering curve was calculated with the Debye equation. The distance distribution function from the spherically averaged auto-correlation function of the density distribution and the radius of gyration was calculated with Equation 4a (see below) in which the scattering amplitudes have to be replaced with density values in this case. A comparison of the simulated scattering curve (data not shown) with the SAXS intensities showed that the minima and maxima of the scattering curve calculated from the TEM model are shifted to lower q values by a factor of 0.88, which is equivalent to an increase in real space dimensions of Modeling of Oxygenated and Deoxygenated KLH1Based on the SAXS data, we constructed models of KLH1 applying a new developed MCSAS. The well established D5 symmetry of molluscan hemocyanins (11) was applied to all of the models. Fig. 2 shows three-dimensional surface representations of KLH1 in the oxygenated and deoxygenated state. Surprisingly, the shapes of the surface are rather different for the oxy and deoxy forms. In contrast to oxygenated KLH1, the deoxygenated molecule shows a pronounced chirality. Five bulges extending over the whole length of the molecule are twisted around the cylindrical axis. This finding is in agreement with the first electron microscopical pictures of a snail hemocyanin 30 ago (33). No mass was detected at the center of the cylinder (Fig. 2d) as discussed previously (34). In addition, in both oxygenation states masses are concentrated at the two ends of the cylindrical molecules, forming the internal "collars."
To reveal differences between the modeled structures with respect to the length and the radius of the cylindrical KLH1 molecules, the radius of gyration as shown in Equation 4a,
The reconstructed models of KLH1 (Fig. 2) provide important information regarding the flexible in-solution structure. Although the changes of the overall dimensions of KLH1 are only Our study provides the first real evidence as to how a molluscan hemocyanin changes during an allosteric transition. Thus, one can really look at allosteric transitions of these large proteins, which were inaccessible or not interpretable by other techniques. The surface of the 15-Å three-dimensional reconstruction of KLH1 based on TEM (11) shows a similar helical pattern as we deduced for the deoxy form from the SAXS data. This is surprising because for the TEM measurement KLH1 was stained in presence of atmospheric oxygen. It seems that exposure of specimen to high vacuum in the TEM experiments results in a rapid release of the reversibly bound oxygen within milliseconds as reported for the molluscan hemocyanin HtH1 (35). Therefore, KLH1 molecules contributing to the three-dimensional reconstruction by TEM are most probably in the deoxy state. This seems to be the case for all of the molluscan hemocyanins investigated by electron microscopy (11, 34). Thus, SAXS may be considered as a very useful complementary method to TEM. As a consequence of these conformational transitions of KLH1 molecules, a strong influence on surface located epitopes is thought to be involved, which may result in differences in the immunological properties of this molecule extensively used in biology and therapeutic medicine. A strong influence of small changes on the surface of proteins such as conformational switches on the effectiveness of epitopes is indeed well documented for other proteins such as myoglobins (36, 37). However, this was never investigated or even considered for KLH, which is commonly used in biochemistry, physiology, immunology, and medicine. Based on our SAXS experiments, we postulate a similar effect for KLH1. It is easy to imagine that the structure and the accessibility of any epitopes on the surface may be different in the oxy and deoxy form of the KLH1 molecules when such massive changes in the surface structure are observed. Thus, our study strongly indicates that more information regarding the epitopes and their changes due to conformational transitions are needed to understand the immunological interaction of KLH1 at the molecular level.
* This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Naturwissenschaftlich-Medizinisches Forschungszentrum (Mainz, Germany), the Materialwissenschaftliches Forschungszentrum (Mainz, Germany), and the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
1 The abbreviations used are: KLH, keyhole limpet hemocyanin; KLH1 and KLH2, keyhole limpet hemocyanin, types 1 and 2; SAXS, small-angle x-ray scattering; FU, functional unit; MC, Monte Carlo; TEM, transmission electron microscopy; Rg, radii of gyration.
We thank Drs. G. Görigk (HASYLAB, Hamburg, Germany) and T. Nawroth (University of Mainz) for their help in performing the SAXS experiments. We also thank Dr. J. R. Harris (University of Mainz) for helpful criticism.
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