Accumulating evidence shows that many particular proteins have evolved to bind multiple targets, including other proteins, peptides, DNA, and small molecule substrates. Multispecific recognition might be not only common but also necessary for the robustness of signaling and metabolic networks in the cell. It is also important for the immune response and for regulation of transcription and translation. Multispecificity presents an apparent paradox: How can a protein encoded by a single sequence accommodate numerous targets? Analysis of sequences and structures of multispecific proteins revealed a number of mechanisms that achieve multispecificity. Interestingly, similar mechanisms appear in antibody-antigen, T-cell receptor-peptide, protein-DNA, enzyme-substrate, and protein-protein complexes. Directed evolution and protein design experiments with multispecific proteins offer some interesting insights into the evolution of such proteins and help in the dissection of molecular interactions that mediate multispecificity. Understanding the basic principles governing multispecificity could greatly assist in the unraveling of various complex processes in the cell. In addition, through manipulation of functional multispecificity, novel proteins could be created for use in various biotechnological and biomedical applications.
A. Erijman, Dantes, A. , Bernheim, R. , Shifman, J. M. , and Peleg, Y. . 2011.
“Transfer-Pcr (Tpcr): A Highway For Dna Cloning And Protein Engineering”. J Struct Biol, 175, Pp. 171-7.
Abstract DNA cloning and protein engineering are basic methodologies employed for various applications in all life-science disciplines. Manipulations of DNA however, could be a lengthy process that slows down subsequent experiments. To facilitate both DNA cloning and protein engineering, we present Transfer-PCR (TPCR), a novel approach that integrates in a single tube, PCR amplification of the target DNA from an origin vector and its subsequent integration into the destination vector. TPCR can be applied for incorporation of DNA fragments into any desired position within a circular plasmid without the need for purification of the intermediate PCR product and without the use of any commercial kit. Using several examples, we demonstrate the applicability of the TPCR platform for both DNA cloning and for multiple-site targeted mutagenesis. In both cases, we show that the TPCR reaction is most efficient within a narrow range of primer concentrations. In mutagenesis, TPCR is primarily advantageous for generation of combinatorial libraries of targeted mutants but could be also applied to generation of variants with specific multiple mutations throughout the target gene. Adaptation of the TPCR platform should facilitate, simplify and significantly reduce time and costs for diverse protein structure and functional studies.
Computational prediction of stabilizing mutations into monomeric proteins has become an almost ordinary task. Yet, computational stabilization of protein-protein complexes remains a challenge. Design of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) is impeded by the absence of an energy function that could reliably reproduce all favorable interactions between the binding partners. In this work, we present three energy functions: one function that was trained on monomeric proteins, while the other two were optimized by different techniques to predict side-chain conformations in a dataset of PPIs. The performances of these energy functions are evaluated in three different tasks related to design of PPIs: predicting side-chain conformations in PPIs, recovering native binding-interface sequences, and predicting changes in free energy of binding due to mutations. Our findings show that both functions optimized on side-chain repacking in PPIs are more suitable for PPI design compared to the function trained on monomeric proteins. Yet, no function performs best at all three tasks. Comparison of the three energy functions and their performances revealed that (1) burial of polar atoms should not be penalized significantly in PPI design as in single-protein design and (2) contribution of electrostatic interactions should be increased several-fold when switching from single-protein to PPI design. In addition, the use of a softer van der Waals potential is beneficial in cases when backbone flexibility is important. All things considered, we define an energy function that captures most of the nuances of the binding energetics and hence, should be used in future for design of PPIs.