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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 282, Issue 38, 27984-27993, September 21, 2007
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¶1
From the
Structural Genomics Consortium and ¶Department of Pharmacology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1L5, Canada and the
Department of Infectious Diseases, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee 38105-2794
Received for publication, March 5, 2007 , and in revised form, July 12, 2007.
| ABSTRACT |
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and PanK3 in complex with acetyl-CoA, a feedback inhibitor. Each monomer adopts a fold of the actin kinase superfamily and the inhibitor-bound structures explain the basis for the allosteric regulation by CoA thioesters. These structures also provide an opportunity to investigate the structural effects of the PanK2 mutations that have been implicated in neurodegeneration. Biochemical and thermodynamic analyses of the PanK3 mutant proteins corresponding to PanK2 mutations show that mutant proteins with compromised activities and/or stabilities correlate with a higher incidence of the early onset of disease. | INTRODUCTION |
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and PanK1
arise from the PANK1 gene through the use of alternate initiating exons (2). PANK2 encodes a protein that is processed twice and localizes to the mitochondria (3, 4) and PANK3 encodes a single cytosolic isoform (5). All of these PanK isoforms share a common, highly homologous catalytic core that is composed of about 355 residues (e.g. the identity of
83%). PanK1
and PanK3 consist of the catalytic core alone, whereas PanK1
has a feedback regulatory domain in an amino-terminal extension (2). The NH2-terminal domain of PanK2 includes two mitochondrial targeting signals, which are removed proteolytically concomitant with its mitochondrial localization (3, 6). In addition, PANK4 encodes a protein with sequence similarity to the other PanKs, but it lacks an essential catalytic glutamate for enzyme activity and has a long carboxyl-terminal extension of unknown function (3).
Mutations in PANK2 have been linked to the inherited pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN) (7), which constitutes a subset of neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation, formerly known as Hallervorden-Spatz syndrome (8). Patients with PKAN exhibit motor symptoms, such as dystonia, dysarthria, intellectual impairment, and gait disturbance (9) and early onset patients have rapidly progressive disease, whereas later onset patients have a slowly progressive, atypical disease (9, 10). The reason for brain iron accumulation in PKAN is still unknown. A current hypothesis of PKAN pathogenesis states that PANK2 mutations lead to a loss of PanK2 function and reduced phosphopantothenate, resulting in the accumulation of cysteine-containing molecules and CoA deficiency (6, 7). These cysteine-containing substrates may undergo rapid autoxidation in the presence of iron, leading to free radical generation and cell damage (6, 7). PANK2 mutations are clustered in the catalytic core domain, and insertion, deletion, and frameshift mutations in the PANK2 gene are linked clinically to early onset disease (10), indicating that null mutants of PanK2 lead to rapidly progressive PKAN. In contrast, the missense mutations have mixed early and late onset patterns (10), and a set of missense mutant proteins expressed in transiently transfected cells are active (4, 11), suggesting that defects unrelated to catalysis contribute to PKAN disease.
A common feature of the PanK isoforms is that they are feedback inhibited by CoA and its thioesters. This regulation is a primary mechanism that controls PanK activity and hence the intracellular CoA level (2, 5, 12). Recent biochemical data show that acetyl-CoA is a more potent feedback inhibitor than free CoA for mouse PanKs (5, 11). Structural studies on PanK have been reported only in bacterial orthologs (13–17). The crystal structures of Escherichia coli PanK reveal why its activity, unlike mouse PanKs, is more potently inhibited by free CoA, (13, 14). Staphylococcus aureus PanK (SaPanK) is the most similar in sequence to the mammalian PanK catalytic core (e.g. the identity of 23%), but is refractory to feedback regulation by CoA (17, 18). Due to the low sequence homology, the structural interpretation of the disease-causing human PanK2 mutations using the SaPanK model is limited to three missense mutations that directly affect the active site (17).
We have determined the homodimeric structures of the catalytic cores of human PanK1
and PanK3 in complex with acetyl-CoA. These crystallographic data provide the first look at the structures of metazoan PanKs and their allosteric regulation. The high degree of similarity between human PanK3 and PanK2 allows an analysis of the mutations associated with PKAN. PanK2 missense mutations mapped onto the active site, dimerization interface, and protein interior tend to be associated with the early onset of PKAN phenotypes and their corresponding PanK3 mutant proteins show PanK inactivation and destabilization. On the other hand, mutations of surface residues have less severe effects on enzyme function and correlate with the mixed early and late onsets of disease.
| EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES |
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(residues 231–597, abbreviated PanK1 below) and PanK3 (residues 12–368) were amplified using PCR and cloned into the expression vector pET28a to obtain NH2-terminal His6 tag fusion proteins. E. coli BL21(DE3) (Stratagene) was transformed with the resulting plasmids and both recombinant PanK1 and PanK3 proteins were overexpressed upon 1.0 mM isopropyl 1-thio-
-D-galactopyranoside induction for 18 h at 18 °C. The proteins were purified using nickel-nitrilotriacetic acid affinity and Superdex 200 (GE Healthcare) gel-filtration columns. Purified PanK1 and PanK3 samples were concentrated to 25 and 30 mg/ml, respectively, and stored at -80 °C in the gel filtration buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 8.0, 200 mM NaCl, 10 mM dithiothreitol). Crystallization—PanK proteins were crystallized using the sitting drop vapor diffusion method at 18 °C. To achieve full occupancy of bound ligands, the proteins were mixed with 5-fold molar excess of an ATP analogue AMP-PNP or acetyl-CoA. The mixtures were incubated overnight at 4 °C. Equal volumes of protein solution and reservoir solution were combined for crystallization. Crystals of PanK1 were grown at 0.1 M Na-Hepes (pH 7.5), 28% PEG400, 0.2 M CaCl2, and 0.02 M tris(2-carboxyethyl) phosphine hydrochloride-HCl, and PanK3 was crystallized in 0.1 M Tris-HCl (pH 8.5), 16% PEG3350, 0.2 M ammonium citrate, and 0.02 M octaethyleneglycol dodecyl ether (C12E8). The mercury derivatives were obtained by soaking PanK1 crystals in the reservoir solution with 5 mM ethylmercury thiosalicylate overnight. All crystals were cryoprotected in the 50:50 mixture of Paratone-N and mineral oil, and flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen. The diffraction quality crystals of PanK1 were obtained in the presence of acetyl-CoA. Although AMP-PNP was added for the crystallization of PanK3, we found acetyl-CoA molecules in the structure that co-purified with PanK3.
Data Collection and Structure Determination—Diffraction data were collected on beamline 19-BM at the Advanced Photon Source, running at 100 K and processed using the HKL2000 program package (19). The program SOLVE (20) was used to locate four mercury sites and to calculate initial phases of PanK1 and the program RESOLVE (21) to improve the initial phases. The model of PanK1 was completed in several repetitions of manual building with the program O (22). The structure of PanK3 was solved by the molecular replacement method using the program MOLREP in the CCP4 package (23) and the PanK1 structure as a search model, and built using the program O (22). Finally, both PanK structures were refined with the program REFMAC5 (24). The crystals of PanK1 contained a dimer in the asymmetric unit and the two monomers were related by noncrystallographic 2-fold symmetry. In PanK3, two dimers were in the asymmetric unit. A dimer state is the most common functional organization for PanK proteins (4, 5, 25). Data collection and refinement statistics are given in Table 1.
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PanK Activity Assay—The effect of acetyl-CoA on the PanK1
and PanK3 Km values for ATP was investigated by using the assay previously described (2, 12). The standard reaction mixture contained 180 µM D-[1-14C]pantothenate (Amersham Biosciences), 10 mM MgCl2, 0.1 M Tris-HCl (pH 7.5), 200 ng of PanK1
or 100 ng of PanK3 and increasing concentrations of ATP and acetyl-CoA, as indicated. The mixture was incubated at 37 °C for 10 min and the radioactive product was quantitated by scintillation counting as described previously (11). Activities of PanK3 mutant proteins were compared with the wild-type using the standard pantothenate kinase assay (11). Briefly, the reaction mixture contained 90 µM D-[1-14C]pantothenate, 2.5 mM ATP, 10 mM MgCl2, 0.1 M Tris-HCl (pH 7.5), and 100 ng of purified protein, and assayed as described above. Relative activities of the mutant proteins were checked three times and these data were combined.
UV-visible Spectra and Mass Spectrometry—UV-visible spectra of PanK3 wild-type and mutant proteins (1 mg/ml in 10 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.0), 50 mM NaCl, 0.5 mM EDTA, 0.5 mM dithiothreitol, and 50% (v/v) glycerol) were recorded as described previously (27). The supernatant (100 µl) from a heat-denatured sample of PanK3 (1.8 mg/ml in 50 mM ammonium acetate, pH 7.0) was desalted on a C-8 MicroTip column (Harvard Apparatus), washed with water, and the protein-bound small molecules were eluted with methanol (100 µl), dried under N2 flow, and resuspended in methanol:water (1:1, v/v, 10 µl). Mass spectrometry analysis was performed using a FinniganTM TSQ® QuantumTM (Thermo Electron Corporation, San Jose, CA) triple quadrupole mass spectrometer equipped with the nanospray ion source.
Stability Studies by Differential Static Light Scattering—The thermostabilities of PanK3 and its mutant proteins were studied using differential static light scattering (28, 29), monitoring protein stability by its aggregation properties. Protein samples at 0.2 mg/ml were heated from 25 to 80 °C at a rate of 1 °C/min in clear bottom 384-well plates (Nunc) in 50 µl of buffer (100 mM Hepes, 150 mM NaCl, pH 7.5). Protein aggregation was measured by recording the scattered light using a CCD camera and taking images of the plate every 0.5 °C. The pixels intensities in a preselected region of each well were integrated using proprietary software to generate a value representative of the total amount of scattered light in that region. These intensities were plotted against temperature for each sample well and fitted to Equation 1 as described by Matulis et al. (30),
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H is the enthalpy of unfolding, R is the general gas constant, Tagg is the temperature of aggregation that represents the melting temperature, and
Cp is the heat capacity difference between the unfolded and folded states of the protein.
Cp of 4.93 kcal/mol was calculated based on the protein sequence and was used in all subsequence calculations (31). The free energy difference 
G between the wild-type and each mutant protein at the temperature of aggregation of the wild-type was calculated using Equation 2,
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Gm(Twt) is the denaturation free energy difference between the wild-type and mutant PanK3, Twt and Tm are the aggregation temperatures of the wild-type and mutant proteins, respectively. Stability Studies by Isothermal Aggregation (ITA)—Isothermal aggregation was measured at 37 °C. Protein samples at 0.2 mg/ml were incubated at 37 °C in clear bottom 384-well plates (Nunc) in 50 µl of buffer (100 mM Hepes, 150 mM NaCl, pH 7.5). Protein aggregation was monitored by detecting the scattered light by taking images every 30 s using a CCD camera for 2 h. Images were analyzed and the intensities were plotted versus time. All curves were normalized to compensate for small differences in initial intensities. The time it takes to have 50% of the protein in the aggregation state, here on, is termed ITA50. Each experiment was repeated 5 times and the average has been reported here.
| RESULTS |
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84% (ClustalW 1.7). The overall monomer fold places the human PanKs in the actin fold protein kinase superfamily (32), and contains two domains (Fig. 1A). The A domain consists of a six-stranded
-sheet (strands Ab1–Ab6) flanked by five helices (Ah1–Ah3 on one side and Ah4 and Ah11 on the other side) and a glycine-rich loop, characteristic of many nucleotide-binding sites (33, 34), lies between strands Ab1 and Ab2. The B domain consists of a nine-stranded
-sheet (strands Bb7–Bb15). One side of this sheet is flanked by six helices (Bh5–Bh10) and an extended loop region between helices Bh6 and Bh9, whereas the other side faces the A domain. The B domains of PanK1 and PanK3 contain an extensive dimerization interface. Whereas the overall root mean square deviation of the two PanK structures including both A and B domains was
1.5 Å for the C
atoms, the root mean square deviation of the A domain was 1.4 Å, and the root mean square deviation of the B domain was 0.85 Å, suggesting that the B domains are structurally more conserved than the A domains (supplemental Fig. S1). As the A domain in the PanK1 model was partly incomplete due to poor electron density (supplemental Fig. S1), the PanK3 structure was used for "Results" and "Discussion," and only its differences from PanK1 were pointed out.
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The Acetyl-CoA Binding Site
In both PanK1 and PanK3 structures, the acetyl pantetheine diphosphate moiety of acetyl-CoA is bound parallel to the
strands of the B domain of one monomer and covered on the other side by the extended loop of the second monomer (Fig. 2A). The main interactions of acetyl-CoA with PanKs occur via the acetyldiphosphopantetheine moiety (Fig. 2B). The 3'-phosphoadenonsine moiety is poorly defined in the electron density map, suggesting that it is disordered and thus not included in the final PanK structures. Residues lining the binding site of the acetyldiphosphopantetheine are identical in both the PanK structures, with the exception of residues 266 and 340 involved in hydrophobic interactions (Fig. 2B). The acetyldiphosphopantetheine moiety forms direct or water-mediated hydrogen bonds and van der Waals interactions with the protein core. The polar residues involved in hydrogen bonds are from the
strands of one monomer (Bb9–Bb11) and the non-polar residues involved in van der Waals interactions are contributed by the extended loop and Bh10' of the second monomer (Fig. 2A). Acetyl-CoA was very tightly bound to PanK3 in the structure, consistent with the low IC50 value for acetyl-CoA inhibition of the enzyme (5).
Predicted Binding Sites for ATP and Pantothenate
The ATP binding site of PanK3 was modeled on the basis of its structural similarity to the SaPanK·AMP-PNP complex (Protein Data Bank code 2EWS) (17) and the location of the conserved glycine-rich loop (Fig. 3A). Superposition of the B domain of PanK3 and the corresponding domain of the SaPanK·AMP-PNP complex placed the ATP molecule between the two domains of the human PanKs. The two domains of PanK3 and also PanK1 were in an "open" conformation compared with the "closed" conformation SaPanK·AMP-PNP (Fig. 3A). The binding of the acetyl-CoA kept PanK in the open conformation, characteristic of the ligand-free structures of actin-fold proteins (32). Acetyl-CoA was a competitive inhibitor of both PanK1 and PanK3 (Fig. 3, B and C), suggesting that the binding of acetyl-CoA interfered with the ATP binding by stabilizing the open conformation. Based on the superimposed structures of PanK3·acetyl-CoA and SaPanK·AMP-PNP, the
,
-phosphates of acetyl-CoA and the
,
-phosphates of ATP occupied the same space (Fig. 3A), explaining the competitive nature of acetyl-CoA and ATP for PanK. Also, we found that a high proportion of purified PanK3 was bound to acetyl-CoA. Heat denaturation of the protein released the bound compound into the supernatant, and analysis of this supernatant by mass spectrometry identified it as acetyl-CoA (Fig. 3D). This indicates that acetyl-CoA remained bound to PanK3 during purification.
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Crystallographic Mapping of Missense Mutations Associated with PKAN Disease
The sequence similarity in the catalytic core domains of PanK3 and PanK2 allowed mapping of the PanK2 missense mutations (10) onto the PanK3 structure (Fig. 4A) and we correlated the locations of the missense mutations with their biochemical and disease phenotypes (Table 2). The mutations were grouped into three categories.
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Mutations at the Dimer Interface and Protein Interior—The PanK3 structure placed eight PanK2 missense mutations (L413P, D447N, S471N, I497T, N500I, I501T, A509V, and N511D) at the dimer interface (Fig. 4A). Of these, Leu213 (Leu413 of PanK2) made van der Waals interactions with non-polar residues (supplemental Fig. S3B), and Asp247, Ser271, Asn300, and Asn311 (Asp447, Ser471, Asn500, and Asn511 of PanK2) formed direct or water-mediated hydrogen bonds to helix Bb9' of the second monomer (supplemental Figs. S2A and S3, B and C). On the other hand, Ile297, Ile301, and Ala309 (Ile497, Ile501, and Ala509 of PanK2) were indirectly involved in PanK3 dimerization. Many water molecules were trapped at the dimer interface and formed a network through the interaction with amino acid residues along the dimer interface (supplemental Fig. S3, B and C). This network, conserved in both PanK1 and PanK3 structures, is considered to tighten the dimerization of two monomers and the mutations at Asp247, Ser271, and Asn300 of PanK3 were predicted to perturb the ordered water molecules. Three PanK2 mutations, L282V, A398T, and L563P, were located in the protein interior (Fig. 4A) and the corresponding residues (Leu82, Ala198, and Leu363) in PanK3 were involved in the hydrophobic interactions with surrounding non-polar residues.
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Mutations at Arg64, Arg78, Arg86, Ser151, and Asn155 of PanK3 (i.e. PanK2-(R264W), -(R278L or C), -(R286C/S351P), and -(N355S)) were predicted to disrupt salt bridges or hydrogen bonds with surrounding residues, also conserved between PanK3 and PanK2 (data not shown). Cys228 of PanK3 (Cys428 of PanK2) was located on the protein surface but its side chain pointed to the protein core (Fig. 4B). Finally, the PanK3 structure indicated that the side chains of five residues, Thr34, Arg49, Glu122, Thr127, and Asn204, corresponding to six PanK2 mutations, T234A, R249P, E322G or D, T327I, and N404I, were exposed to solvent with no other apparent interactions.
Biochemical and Thermodynamic Characterization of PanK3 Mutant Proteins
We cloned, expressed, and purified 27 PanK3 mutant proteins that correspond to the PanK2 missense mutations described above. The effects of these mutations on activity and stability of the protein were investigated using in vitro PanK activity and thermostability assays (Fig. 4C, Table 2). The mutations located at the ATP binding site severely affected the catalytic activity and stability of the protein. PanK3-(G19V) (PanK2-(G219V)) had negligible activity (
1%) and its Tagg (36.7 °C) was lower than the wild-type (45.4 °C) with a significant destabilization energy of -2.46 Kcal/mol (Table 2). PanK3-(G321R)(PanK2-(G521R)) was insoluble and could not be studied with either technique.
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G values of -3.32 and -1.84 Kcal/mol, respectively, and they also exhibited compromised catalytic activities (Table 2). Three other PanK3 mutations along the dimer interface, D247N (PanK2-(D447N)), S271N (PanK2-(S471N)), and I297T (PanK2-(I497T)) did not affect dimer assembly but significantly altered their enzymatic activities and thermostabilities. The other dimer interface mutant proteins, I301T (PanK2-(I501T)), A309V (PanK2-(A509V)), and N311D (PanK2-(N511D)) eluted as dimers and showed moderate protein destabilizations, and no significant changes in their activities relative to the wild-type (Fig. 4C). A mutation in the interior of PanK3, L363P (PanK2-(L563P)), exhibited complete insolubility in protein purification trial, whereas the other interior mutant protein, L82V (PanK2-(L282V)) was soluble and displayed moderate destabilization with catalytic activity similar to the wild-type (Fig. 4C).
Most of the surface mutations exhibited moderate or no significant reduction in their thermostability (Tagg) or activity (Fig. 4C). Of these, PanK3-(R64W) (PanK2-(R264W)) was stable with a Tagg value similar to the wild-type and low 
G (0.16 Kcal/mol), but the activity was reduced to 36% of the wild-type. On the other hand, the Tagg values of the three other surface mutant proteins, R86C (PanK2-(R286C)), S151P (PanK2-(S351P)), and K332W (PanK2-(R532W)), decreased to
40 °C with 
G between -0.9 and -1.57 Kcal/mol; nevertheless, their activities were similar to that of the wild-type (Table 2). These findings suggest that the effects of these surface mutations are not always the same on both protein thermostability and activity. The other 11 surface mutations including T328M (PanK2-(T528M)) displayed moderate or no protein destabilization and their activities were similar to the wild-type.
Some of the surface mutations such as PanK3-(T34A), PanK3-(R49P), PanK3-(R64W), PanK3-(N155S), PanK3-(C228Y), and PanK3-(T328M) had only a negligible effect on the stability of the protein (
Tagg < 2 °C) (Table 2), which is within the experimental error of differential static light scattering. We performed further tests with these mutant proteins by ITA, a more sensitive technique than differential static light scattering that monitors the aggregation of the proteins at constant temperature under a defined set of buffer conditions (36, 37). At 37 °C, the time required to reach 50% aggregation (ITA50) for wild-type PanK3 was 33.5 min, whereas PanK3-(T328M) corresponding to PanK2-(T528M) was 25 min (supplemental Table S1). Most of the PanK3 surface mutant proteins aggregated more quickly than the wild-type protein (supplemental Table S1), suggesting that the mutations had reduced protein stability.
| DISCUSSION |
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with the IC50 of 80 µM, whereas acetyl-CoA has an IC50 of 5 µM (5). The structures of catalytic core domains of two PanK isoforms suggest that the lower potency of CoA, compared with its thioesters, is attributed to the lack of the thioester carbonyl oxygen that forms a hydrogen bond with the main chain amide of a valine (supplemental Fig. S4). Additionally, the binding pocket for the acetyl moiety of acetyl-CoA is partially exposed to solvent, providing the opening for longer chain acyl moieties to interact with the same site. The monomer folding and dimer assembly of human PanK catalytic core domains are similar to that of SaPanK (17). Unlike human PanKs, however, SaPanK is refractory to inhibition by CoA and its thioesters (18). Compared with the human PanK3 structure, SaPanK has two residues that line the acetyl-CoA pocket that would hinder the binding of feedback inhibitors (Ala337 of PanK3 versus Tyr240 of SaPanK and Trp341 of PanK3 versus Arg244 of SaPanK) (supplemental Fig. S4). The substitution of alanine to a bulky residue, tyrosine, may cause steric hindrance for the binding of CoA and the substitution of tryptophan to arginine introduces a positive charge, disrupting the hydrophobic binding pocket for the sulfhydryl group of CoA or the acyl groups of the thioesters. These two residues in PanK3 are also conserved in the other PanK isoforms (supplemental Fig. S4).
PanK2 Instability as a Determinant of PKAN—Structural analysis of the catalytic cores of PanK1 and PanK3 provides an opportunity to understand why many of the mutations that give rise to PKAN disease abolish the catalytic activity of PanK. Of the two mutations at the ATP-binding site, PanK3-(G19V) exhibits large reductions in both protein stability and enzymatic activity, and PanK3-(G321R) is insoluble (Fig. 4C). Low enzymatic activity, structural instability, and abnormal processing are observed with the corresponding human PanK2-(G219V) and PanK2-(G521R) mutations (4, 11). Many of the inactivating mutations are located in the dimerization interface and require between -0.77 and -4.36 Kcal/mol less free energy than the wild-type to unfold. Five of eight dimerization mutations give rise to catalytically inactive proteins in vitro, although three dimerization mutations have a less severe effect on activity (Fig. 4C). Similarly, one of the three mutations in the inner protein core, PanK3-(L363P), is insoluble (data not shown). The corresponding PanK2-(L563P) mutant protein is catalytically inactive (11). Our findings on the activities of the PanK3 mutant proteins reflect data obtained with the authentic PanK2 protein (4, 11), supporting the close relationship between the structures of these proteins. These findings suggest that proper monomer folding and dimerization are critical for the stability of PanK3 and enzymatic activity. More than 80% of patients who have the PanK2 active site or dimerization mutations are linked to the clinically early onset phenotype (10) (Table 2), thus structural destabilization of monomers that cannot form dimers or improperly formed dimers appears as a major contributor to PKAN.
The group of mutations that has confounded the field maps predominantly to the protein surface. Hydrophilic or charged residues are frequently substituted with hydrophobic residues (11 of 15 surface mutations), and these mutations do not result in the loss of PanK2 (11) or PanK3 catalytic activity and have 
G values <2 Kcal/mol in the PanK3 model (Table 2). Surface residues of globular proteins are mainly hydrophilic, and the stabilities of globular proteins are altered by changing surface residues involved in salt bridge or hydrogen bond interactions (39–44). Substitutions of solvent-exposed hydrophilic residues to hydrophobic residues may locally disrupt the hydrophilicity of the protein (45), destabilizing protein conformation. Of 15 surface mutant proteins of PanK3, eight have moderate reductions (
Tagg > 2 °C) in the Tagg values and 14 are rapidly aggregated in vitro at 37 °C compared with wild-type, but retain activity (Table 2 and supplemental Table S1). It will be important to extend these experiments from the PanK3 model to actual PanK2 mutant proteins because the degree of destabilization by elimination of surface salt bridges is highly dependent on the context in which they occur, and there are 56 amino acid differences between PanK3 and PanK2 plus an additional 60-residue amino-terminal extension in PanK2 that interacts with the catalytic core in an unknown way and may either positively or negatively affect the degree of protein destabilization by surface mutation changes.
Kotzbauer et al. (4) examined the stability and processing of PanK2 mutant proteins in cultured cells. PanK2-(G521R) has a shorter half-life and is abnormally processed compared with wild-type, consistent with the compromised structural integrity of the corresponding PanK3 mutant protein. These data indicate that the other PanK2 mutant proteins that correspond to PanK3 mutant proteins that alter protein stability may have a shorter half-life in vivo than their wild-type counterpart, and perhaps explains why these mutations are associated with early onset of the disease. However, the surface mutations have modest effects on PanK3 stability and similar in vivo experiments with the PanK2-(T528M) and PanK2-(T234A) did not reveal any differences between these two mutants and the wild-type with respect to activity, stability, and processing (4). Our biophysical studies on the analogous PanK3 isoform may suggest that there may still be more subtle effects on stability than noted in these experiments, or that alternatively, the surface mutations may relate to compromising the binding of PanK2 to as yet unidentified protein partners or regulatory ligands. On the other hand, PanK2 is translocated into the mitochondria (3, 4) and mitochondria produce most of the reactive oxygen species (46), suggesting the damage of mitochondrial PanK2 by reactive oxygen species is possible. Hydrogen peroxide is one of the major reactive oxygen species in mitochondria and modifies sulfur-containing amino acids (26, 38). Some PanK2 surface mutant proteins such as PanK2-(R278C), -(R286C), and -(T528M) may be more susceptible to hydrogen peroxide modification than wild-type and when modified, enhance protein destabilization in mitochondria.
In summary, we have presented the first structure of human PanK1 and PanK3 isoforms in complex with acetyl-CoA. The structures show a common architecture of the catalytic cores of human PanK isoforms and explain the allosteric regulation during CoA biosynthesis. Mapping of PanK2 mutations to the PanK3 structure and mutational studies on PanK3 isoform reveal that mutations at the ATP binding site, dimer interface and protein interior compromise their enzyme activities and stabilities and are mostly associated with the early onset of the PKAN phenotype, whereas surface mutations are catalytically active but show slight instabilities relative to the wild-type and are linked to the mixed onset of disease phenotype. These findings contribute to our understanding of the dysfunctional effects of polymorphic PanK2 mutations and help decipher the manner in which enzymatically active mutant proteins are linked to disease.
| FOOTNOTES |
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* This work was supported by the Structural Genomics Consortium with funds from Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund, the Ontario Innovation Trust, the Wellcome Trust, GlaxoSmithKline, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Vinnova, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, National Institutes of Health Grants GM62896 and GM34496, Cancer Center (CORE) Support Grant CA21765, and the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities. Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. 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. ![]()
The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Figs. S1–S4 and Table S1. ![]()
1 To whom correspondence may be addressed. Tel.: 416-946-3867; Fax: 416-946-0880; E-mail: heewon.park{at}utoronto.ca.
2 The abbreviations used are: PanK, pantothenate kinase; PKAN, PanK-associated neurodegeneration; Pan, pantothenate; SaPanK, Staphylococcus aureus PanK; ITA, isothermal aggregation; AMP-PNP, adenosine 5'-(
,
-imido)triphosphate. ![]()
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| REFERENCES |
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