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BIOPHYSICS
Comparison of the proteinprotein interfaces in the p53DNA crystal structures: Towards elucidation of the biological interface


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*Basic Research Program, SAIC-Frederick, Inc., Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD 21702;
Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540; and
Sackler Institute of Molecular Medicine, Department of Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
Communicated by Peter M. Howley, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, January 11, 2005 (received for review November 24, 2004)
| Abstract |
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p53 dimeric interface | p53 tetramer | hot spots | cancer | gene regulation
The interdomain and intradomain interactions of p53 are critical for its association with other molecules (38). The tetramer domain provides a direct way for the p53 oligomerization, by forming a dimer of dimers (9). The tetramer domain is particularly important for the p53 binding of DNA loops (10, 11) or of supercoiled DNA (11). However, without the tetramer domain, the CBD binds DNA with a weaker affinity, also in a cooperative manner (12).
Structures of the individual isolated domains have been solved (1317). The crystal structures of the CBD have been solved with (13) and without (14) DNA.
In the structure of the p53 CBDDNA complex (Fig. 5, which is published as supporting information on the PNAS web site), the DNA mainly interacts with chain B. Chain C contacts both chain B and the DNA with a very similar orientation as chain B. Chain A is in contact with chain B; however, it has only limited interaction with the DNA. Thus, it has been believed that the interaction of chain A is caused by crystal packing (13). Interestingly, both proteinprotein interfaces (AB and BC), which are involved in the CBDDNA complex are also observed in crystal structures of the p53 core domain oligomers in the absence of DNA. The crystal structure of the mouse p53 core domain has a noncrystallographic trimer with three nearly identical dimer contacts. These contacts are similar to the chains AB interface, with a 12° rotation (14). The crystal structure of a superstable quadruple mutant of the human p53 CBD was also solved in its DNA-free form. Interestingly, the crystal contact between the two core domains in the mutant structure is very similar to the chains BC interface (18). Although a recurring pattern of the core domain interactions in the crystal may indicate a biological relevance, it is still possible that they reflect packing artifacts (12). To ascertain the interactions in solution, two NMR spectroscopy studies were directed at the CBD dimer interaction and their effect on DNA binding. The two studies differ in their explanation of the interactions. However, they both agree on the importance of the helix 1 region (V173C182) (12, 19).
Although the available results provide crucial data relating to the p53DNA contact, the information regarding the active biological oligomeric state is confusing. How the tetramer binds to the DNA is still an open question. Such information is crucial to understand the biological activity of p53. Here, we investigate the biological p53p53 CBD dimeric interaction. We expect that knowledge of their mode of dimerization would serve as a key to figuring out the p53 oligomerization, CBD interactions with other domains, and ultimately p53DNA interactions.
In this study, we analyzed the sequence and structural features of the proteinprotein interfaces present in the p53DNA structure (PDB ID code 1TSR
[PDB]
) and performed extensive molecular dynamics simulations (
50 ns in total) of the p53 dimers. Combined, these studies led us to conclude that chains AB in the p53 trimerDNA complex are more likely to constitute a stable biological interface than BC.
| Methods |
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atoms of each residue were averaged over the three chains of the p53 core domainDNA complex (PDB ID code 1TSR
[PDB]
). The residues were ranked according to their B-factor values and were divided equally into the following three categories: low-, medium-, and high-B-factor value regions. Residues in low B-factor regions were examined by their surface exposure. If a residue in the low B-factor region is surface-exposed, it is identified as potential binding site. The surface area was calculated by using a rolling water ball with a radius of 1.4 Å. A surface residue was defined when its accessible surface area was >25% of the residue. Two residues are considered to be in contact across the interface if there is at least a pair of atoms, one from each residue, at a distance smaller than the sum of their van der Waals radii plus a threshold of 0.5 Å.
Molecular dynamics simulations were performed by using the CHARMM package (20) and the CHARMM 27 force field (21). Long-range electrostatic interactions were calculated with the particle mesh Ewald method (22). The systems were kept in constant pressure ensembles (NPTs) with the Hoover temperature control (23). The reference pressure was 1 atm (1 atm = 101.3 kPa), and the temperature was 300 K. The time step was 2 fs, with a SHAKE constraint on all bonds with hydrogen atoms. Dimers were built by using the crystal structure conformations. Chloride atoms were added to make the overall system neutral. The overall systems contained 390 aa from the protein dimers and 11,457 water molecules.
The p53 dimerDNA complexes were simulated by using the generalized Born method with molecular volume (GBMV) (24). To evaluate the energy as accurately as possible, no distance cutoff is used, and the grid-based GBMV module is used. In the GBMV calculation, the dielectric constant of water is set at 80, and the DebyeHuckel ionic term is 0.2 to reflect the salt effect.
Three Cys residues that are coordinated with Zn were deprotonated. The distances of the three ZnS bonds and ZnN between the ZnHis were fixed during the simulation. The charge and van der Waals parameters of the Zn and deprotonated Cys were taken from Maynard and Covell (25).
| Results |
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Conformational Changes of the p53 CBD Monomer. The conformational changes of the p53 CBD, especially those around the DNA-binding domain, will affect the p53DNA interactions. We focused on the flexibility around the DNA-binding site, dividing it into four regions (Fig. 1). Region 1 is loop1, with six residues in contact with the DNA (G117, T118, A119, K120, S121, and V122); region 2 is helix 2 (binding residues: R280, D281, R283, and T284); region 3 has two loops in the inner pocket (Q136, L137, V272, R273, V274, C275, A276, and C277); and region 4 consists of loop3 (N239, S240, S241, M243, G244, N247, R248, and R249). Among these residues, the mutational hot spots R248 and R249 are in region 4, R273 is in the inner region 3, and R282 is within the helix region 2.
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-sheets do not change during the simulation. However, several loop regions are flexible, and they are responsible for the large rmsd of the monomer (data not shown). The red ribbon in Fig. 1 represents the backbone crystal structure. The green ribbon represents the final snapshot from the molecular dynamics simulation of the CBD monomer. It shows that the loop1 is the most flexible part of the CBD. Interestingly, loop1 completely flipped away from the binding site, with an average deviation of 810 Å for the six residues binding DNA. Three other binding regions also fluctuate, with the helix 2 region fluctuating the most, from 2 to 4 Å. The results suggest that the binding site of the core domain monomer may need to be stabilized for DNA binding. Similar trends were observed in the exposed DNA binding sites in the dimer simulations.
Conformational Changes of the p53 CBD AB Chain Dimer. Conventional wisdom is that the AB dimer derives from crystal packing (13). However, as indicated in our structural and sequential analysis, the AB dimer interface has more binding hot spots than the BC dimer. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the AB dimer has a stable interface and a stable DNA-binding motif. The conformational changes for the overall structure and the binding motif are shown in Fig. 2. Fig. 2 AC shows the AB dimer in its neutral His form, and Fig. 2 DF shows the dimer in the protonated His form (AB dimer-hsp).
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5 ns. Then, the rmsd gradually increases to 45 Å, and it fluctuates in this range. Compared with the monomeric state, the binding motif is stabilized by the AB dimerization (Fig. 2 B and C). The loop1 is still flexible, although to a lesser extent than in the monomer. Other important binding sites, especially helix 1 and the inner pocket, are also much more stable than these in the monomeric state. Further, it is particularly interesting to note that there is an allosteric stabilization effect of the DNA-binding motif from the dimerization. In the AB dimer, the DNA-binding motif in chain B is near the AB interface, and thus, it is expected that the binding motif should be stabilized by the dimerization. However, the DNA-binding motif in chain A is exposed, and it is far away from the interface. As shown in Fig. 2B, the chain A DNA-binding motif is also allosterically stabilized. If the AB dimer is the biological free dimer in solution, the protonated protein should be closer to its final DNA-binding state because of the overall charged state of the DNA. His residues in the biologically active state should be protonated. We selectively protonated five His residues according to the suggestion of Wright et al. (28). The only two His residues left in the deprotonated state are His-179, which is coordinated to Zn, and His-214, which is close to R174. We term the AB dimer with the protonated His residues AB dimer-hsp. The dynamical behavior of AB dimer-hsp is shown in Fig. 2 DF.
Initially, the dynamics of the AB dimer-hsp fluctuates more than that of the AB dimer, with a slightly larger overall rmsd in the early stage of the simulation. However, it is greatly stabilized compared with the overall trajectory of the AB dimer with neutral His residues. The most obvious effect of the protonation is the dynamics of the loop1 (Fig. 2F). Unlike its flexible nature in the neutral His form, loop1 is stabilized in the DNA-binding conformation in the protonated His form. Interestingly, the loop1 in chain B, which is close to the incoming DNA, fluctuates initially and then settles to its DNA-binding position and stays there for the rest of the simulation (Fig. 2F).
We also simulated the AB dimers at the following different conditions (Table 3, which is published as supporting information on the PNAS web site). (i) AB dimer-2: the AB dimer from the crystal structure of the free mouse p53 CBD (without DNA, PDB: 1hu8 [PDB] ). Here, the AB dimer has a similar interface as in the DNA-coordinated p53 but with a twisted (12°) AB orientation; (ii) AB dimer-apo: Zn-free form of the AB CBD dimer.
The conformation of the AB dimer-2 (Fig. 7 AC, which is published as supporting information on the PNAS web site) is much less stable than the AB dimer (Fig. 2). The individual domains themselves have a similarly small rmsd compared with the AB dimer. However, the overall rmsd for the AB dimer-2 jumps by as much as 6 Å. The motion of the AB dimer-2 does not relax to the conformation of the AB dimer. The dimeric contact of the AB dimer-2 is held by two strong interactions, as observed in the AB dimer itself. One is the hydrophobic interaction of A-Phe-212 with the B chain loop; another is the cross-interface backbone hydrogen bonds of B-Arg-181 to A-Arg-175 and A-Glu-180 (Fig. 6). Even though the orientation of the two core domains fluctuates during the simulation, these two key interaction patches are very stable. Protonation of His does not stabilize the AB dimer-2 hsp (data not shown).
The Zn-free AB dimer-apo partially unfolds during the simulation (Fig. 3A). Even though the two core domains are initially stable, the dimer is not. The rmsd for the Zn-free AB dimer-apo quickly reaches 4 Å at
2 ns and gradually increases to 6 Å. Chain B partially unfolds during the simulation, with the N-terminal residues (Ser-96Gln-104) flipping away.
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34 Å (Fig. 4A). The individual domain rmsd values are similar to those in the AB dimer, with chain C having a slightly higher rmsd. In the BC dimer, loop1 of chain B is exposed. Loop1 of chain C is within the BC interface. Thus, the dynamic behavior of loop1 in chains B and C is different, with the exposed loop1 in chain B fluctuating as usual, whereas loop1 in chain C is stabilized by the interface interaction. Still, the rmsd of the chain C loop1 is increasing. Then, the question is whether the His protonation can stabilize loop1 in the BC dimer.
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6 Å (Fig. 4 DF). Thus, unlike the small structural variations observed in the simulations of the AB dimer-hsp (Fig. 2B), the BC dimer-hsp interface does not retain its stability (Fig. 4D). Energetic Comparison of p53(AB)DNA Complex and p53(BC)DNA Complex. In our molecular dynamics simulations, the AB dimer is more stable than the BC dimer. By using the recently released DFIRE potentials (31), we calculated the binding energies. We found that the strength of the AB interaction is almost twice (10.4 kcal/mol) that of the BC interaction (5.5 kcal/mol). However, this proteinprotein interaction might change upon DNA binding. To address the question of a possible change of the stability preference of the AB versus the BC dimer upon DNA binding, we simulated the p53(AB)DNA complex and p53(BC)DNA complex briefly with GBMV (24). The initial structures are taken from the p53DNA complex by removing one copy of the monomer from the crystal structure [chain C for p53(AB)DNA complex, and chain A for p53(BC)DNA complex]. Ser-94 was removed from chain A to have the same number of amino acids as chain C. For each complex, 50 structures from the 50-ps molecular dynamics simulations were saved. The structures were minimized with 500 steps, and the total energies (including internal energy, van der Waals energy, coulombic interaction, and electrostatic-solvation energies) are evaluated with the grid-based GBMV. The average energy from the 50 p53(AB)DNA structures is 21,047 kcal/mol, and the average energy from the 50 p53(BC)DNA structures is 20,983 kcal/mol. Thus, the p53(AB)DNA complex is more stable than the p53(BC)DNA complex.
| Discussion and Conclusions |
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Surface Analysis of p53 CBD. Structural and sequential analysis of proteinprotein interfaces revealed that structurally conserved residues correspond to energy hot spots, with packing playing a critical role. B factors are largely determined by local packing (30). Surface residues with low B-factor values correspond to highly packed regions. Here, we simply use the B factors of surface residues to locate potential proteinprotein interaction hot spots. The surface analysis indicates that the AB interface has more residues with low B factors than the BC interface. AB interface residues with low B factors are highly conserved. Their mutations cause cancer (Table 1). Thus, according to this analysis, the AB interface is more important for CBDCBD interactions.
AB Dimer or BC Dimer: Comparison with Experimental Results. Klein et al. (19) investigated the solution dimerization interface of the p53 CBD bound to the consensus DNA. Their results revealed the essential role of the short H1 helix (Pro-177Cys-182). This helix contains mutational hot spots, particularly the three exposed residues Pro-177, His-178, and Arg-181. They also found that a change in the conformation of the helix 1 region may modify the p53 dimerization behavior and prevent cooperative DNA binding. Helix 1 forms part of the AB interface. In our binding hot-spot analysis, we identified His-178, which has the smallest B factor among the surface residues. Rippin et al. (12) provided further insight into the intermolecular contacts of the p53 CBD by NMR analysis. They found that isolated CBDs dimerize at low salt concentration with a dissociation constant of 24 µM. Similar to the NMR results of Klein et al., Rippin et al. also identified helix 1 (V173C182) as interface region. In addition, they also found that G244 and the loop1 region L114T118 are also affected by the dimerization. Loop1 is within the BC interface and may support a BC interface. However, loop1 is also in the vicinity of the AB interface. Also, A-G244 forms a backbone hydrogen bond with B-Arg-181, consistent with the observed NMR shifts.
In addition to the direct interface interaction, the chemical-shift difference observed experimentally could be the consequence of the DNA binding (12). The change in the helix 1 region may be translated from the DNA interface via the bound Zn. As to the loop1 region, because DNA binds the Arg at the tip of the loop, it is expected to change the loop dynamics. Further, DNA binding will protonate the His residue in the CBD, and we have demonstrated that the most significant effect of the His protonation is the stabilization of the loop1.
In either of these cases, combining the simulation results and available NMR studies, it is most likely that, of AB and BC, the functional form of the CBD dimer is AB. The AB dimer is stable in the neutral pH range and is highly stable in the protonated His form, which is crucial for DNA binding. In addition, only the AB dimer can provide a critical loop1 conformation in a protonated environment. The BC dimer might have some stability in the neutral pH form. However, it is not a functional (DNA binding) dimer. The BC dimer interface most likely derives from crystal packing. Consistently, the energetic comparisons confirm that p53(AB)DNA complex is more stable than p53(BC)DNA complex.
The AB Versus the BC Dimer: DNA Binding, Dimerization of the CBD, and Tetramerization of p53. Our results suggest that chain A may lead to a stable DNA-binding motif in chain B, which binds DNA directly. Chain A has a few interactions with the DNA backbone. Thus, the AB dimer still binds a half site with 10 base pairs. For the full-length p53, the N-terminal and, in particular, the C-terminal domains may lead to an altered tighter contact between chain A and the DNA, like the symmetrical form suggested in ref. 13.
A dimer of AB dimers could represent a key feature of the p53 tetramer. The large conformational change of loop1 observed in our simulations provides insight into p53DNA binding, which has been difficult to observe from the crystal structure alone. Mutations in the loop1 region enhance specific p53DNA binding (32), probably because of the stabilization of loop1. The recently solved crystal structure of Cep-1, the human p53 Caenorhabditis elegans ortholog (33) also highlights the need to understand the function of the loop1. The conformation of loop1 in Cep-1 differs greatly from that of human p53. Huyen et al. (33) considered the possibility of DNA-binding-induced conformational change for loop1; however, they disfavored the conformational change and proposed a different DNA-binding orientation.
Based on the possible core-domain dimers, we propose p53DNA binding mechanisms. Schemes 1 and 2 in Fig. 8 (which is published as supporting information on the PNAS web site) are based on the AB dimer. In Scheme 1 (in Fig. 8), two AB dimers are bound nonspecifically to the DNA at different sites, sliding along the DNA to form a tetramer at specific binding site. In Scheme 2, one dimer binds the DNA at a specific site, with lower affinity, and the second dimer joins to form a tetramer. In the less likely scenario in which BC is a biological interface (Scheme 3 in Fig. 9, which is published as supporting information on the PNAS web site), the dimer binds the DNA occupying a half site. The second BC dimer leads to a tetramer.
Protein sliding along the DNA chain is an efficient way to locate a specific binding site (34). Atomic-force microscopy has shown two modes of p53DNA recognition, (i) direct binding, and (ii) an initial nonspecific binding with subsequent sliding to the specific site (35). A large proteinDNA interface interferes with the sliding (34). In this regard, again, an AB dimer in which DNA-binding interactions center in chain B is better than a BC dimer. Schemes 1 and 2 (in Fig. 8) are consistent with experimental observations for p53DNA binding (36), which showed that, although one dimer within the tetramer is sufficient for binding to the DNA, concurrent interaction of the second dimer greatly enhances binding affinity.
The p53p53 interface in the trimeric state without DNA is affected by crystal packing. Considering both AB and BC dimers, we propose possible mechanisms for the p53 core domainDNA interaction. Overall, the dimer interactions between the p53 core domains and the resulting DNA interactions are better explained with the AB dimer interactions as compared with the BC. Last, the exposed binding site on chain A for the AB dimer could provide a binding site for the DNA loop binding under suitable conditions. To elucidate the biological interface, the next step involves a comparison of the AB interface with those in other models, like the symmetry one.
| Acknowledgements |
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| Footnotes |
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Abbreviations: rmsd, rms deviation; CBD, core-binding domain; GBMV, generalized Born method with molecular volume.
To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: mab{at}ncifcrf.gov, ruthn{at}ncifcrf.gov, or alevine{at}ias.edu.
© 2005 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
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