Protein crystallization using incomplete factorial experiments.
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Adenosine Triphosphate↗
Biomedical subjects
C W Carter
Publications and source records attributed to C W Carter.
Superstructural differences between chromatin in nuclei and in solution are revealed by kinetics of micrococcal nuclease digestion.
Digestion of chromatin in nuclei by micrococcal nuclease, measured as the change in the concentration of monomer-length DNA with time, displays Michaelis-Menten kinetics. Redigestion of soluble chromatin prepared from nuclei by micrococcal nuclease treatment, however, is apparently first order in enzyme and independent of chromatin concentration. This qualitative difference results from an increase in the apparent second order rate constant, kcat/Km, for liberation of monomer DNA: the apparent Km for soluble chromatin is lower by close to 3 orders of magnitude than that for chromatin in nuclei, whereas kcat decreases by less than 1 order of magnitude. Neither the integrity of the nuclear membrane nor the presence of histone H1 contributes to the high Michaelis constant characteristic of chromatin in nuclei. Moreover, differences due to the buffers used for digestion and redigestion are minimal. Low catalytic efficiency is, however, correlated with the presence of higher order chromatin superstructure. Micrococcal nuclease added to soluble chromatin under nondigesting conditions at low ionic strength (I = 0.002) co-sediments with chromatin in sucrose gradients. In 0.15 M NaCl, added nuclease no longer sediments with chromatin and redigestion kinetics become first order in both enzyme and substrate. Kinetic analysis of this type may afford an assay for native, higher order structures in chromatin. Our results suggest that micrococcal nuclease binds to soluble chromatin through additional interactions not present in nuclei, which may be partly ionic in nature.
Animals↗
Nucleosomal structure of Epstein-Barr virus DNA in transformed cell lines.
Micrococcal nuclease digestion was used to analyze Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA structure in nuclei of transformed cells. Digests of virus-producing (P3HR-1), non-virus-producing (Raji), and superinfected Rajii cell nuclei were fractionated by electrophoresis on agarose gels, transferred to nitrocellulose, and hybridized to 32P-labeled EBV DNA. The viral DNA of Raji nuclei produced a series of bands on electrophoresis whose lengths were integral multiples of a unit size, which was the same as the repeat length of host DNA. Viral DNA in nuclei of P3HR-1 and superinfected Raji cells produced faintly visible bands superimposed on a smear of viral DNA which dominated the hybridization pattern. No differences were detected in the patterns when total DNA digests from Raji, P3HR-1, and an EBV DNA-negative cell line (U-698M) were analyzed by ethidium bromide staining or by hybridization with the use of 32P-labeled lymphoblastoid cell DNA as probe. We conclude that the EBV episomal DNA of Raji cells is folded into nucleosomes, whereas most of the viral DNA of P3HR-1 and superinfected Raji cells is not. This pattern of DNA organization differs signficantly from that in papova group viruses.
Burkitt Lymphoma↗
Cross-referencing testis-specific nuclear proteins by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis.
Discontinuous sodium sodecyl sulfate-gel electrophoresis combined with acid-urea gel electrophoresis reveals that both testis histone H1 classes TH1-X (Branson, R. E., Grimes, S. R., Jr., Yonuschot, G., and Irvin, J. L (1975) Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 168, 403-412) and H1 contain two polypeptides each. Migration properties and relative staining intensities of the four H1 histone proteins in testis support the following conclusions. 1. Two testis-specific forms become the major H1 components at some stage of spermatogenesis. 2. During this stage they assume structural and functional role analogous to those of their two somatic counterparts. We have also detected a new testis-specific protein containing cysteine.
Animals↗
Histone packing in the nucleosome core particle of chromatin.
The chromatin core particle DNA conformation deduced in broad outline by Finch et al. [Finch, J. T., Lutter, L. C., Rhodes, D., Brown, R. S., Rushton, B., Levitt, M. & Klug, A. (1977) Nature 269, 29-36] can be described in detail using other available experimental results. Histone binding sites compatible with the pattern of pancreatic DNase I digestion (Simpson, R. T. & Whitlock, J. P., Jr. (1976) Cell 9, 347-353; Noll, M. (1977) J. Mol. Biol. 116, 49-71; Lutter, L. C. (1977) J. Mol. Biol. 117, 53-69] lend to core particle DNA pseudosymmetry characteristic of molecular point group D(3). DNA symmetry and pseudosymmetry, in turn, imply equivalence and quasi-equivalence properties of the histone packing arrangement that support the following deductions: (i) One and only one alpha(2)beta(2) histone tetramer, presumably (H3)(2)(H4)(2), can serve as a stable subassembly within the histone octamer. (ii) There is a unique, strand-specific way to assign DNA binding domains to the arginine-rich histones (H3 and H4). (iii) Histones H3 and H4 alone should suffice to impose a supercoiled structure on DNA, as is observed experimentally, because only the tetramer can mimic a screw dislocation and thereby complement the screw symmetry of the DNA supercoil. (iv) The two slightly lysine-rich histones H2A and H2B are probably responsible, each in a different way, for dividing the eukaryotic chromatin fiber into discrete subunits. (v) The proposed arrangement of four distinct proteins appears to be a minimum formal requirement for making nucleosomes; that is, for introducing regularly spaced supercoiled DNA folds without also allowing formation of an indefinitely long (and genetically inert) DNA superhelix.
Binding Sites↗
New stereochemical analogies between iron-sulfur electron transport proteins.
Active sites of Chromatium high potential iron protein (HiPIP) and Pseudomonas Aerogenes ferredoxin can be brought into equivalent orientations by assuming that their Fe4S4Sgamma4 clusters have the effective symmetry of the non-axial molecular point group Cs. Previously undetected analogies between the two proteins emerge as a result of selecting a common orientation in this mammer. Polypeptide segments connecting Cys 46 to Cys 63 in HiPIP and Cys 18 to Cys 35 in ferredoxin are analogous in the sense that they are the same length, they connect equivalent cysteinyl sulfur atoms, and they have similar, twisted antiparalled beta conformations. Tyrosine residues 19 (HiPIP) and 2 (ferredoxin) are analogous in the sense that they interact closely with equivalent inorganic sulfur atoms. To a good approximation, interactions with the polypeptide backbone and with tyrosine side chains in the two proteins place their Fe4S4Sgamma4 moieties into diastereomeric environments, which would be expected to induce different physical and chemical behavior. Circular dichroism spectra of native and super reducible HiPIP (Cammack, R. (1973) Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 54, 548-554) suggest that this relationship can help to explain the contrasting oxidoreduction properties of the two proteins.
Binding Sites↗
Self redigestion of native chromatin.
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Animals↗
Crystallographic structure refinement of Chromatium high potential iron protein at two Angstroms resolution.
The structure of Chromatium high potential iron protein (HiPIP) has been refined by semiautomatic Fo-Fc (observed minus calculated structure amplitude Fourier methods to a convential R index, R=sum of the absolute value of Fo-Fc divided by the sum of Fo, of 24.7% for a model in which bond distances and angles are constrained to standard values. Bond length and angle constraints were applied only intermittenly during the computations. At a late stage of the refinement, atomic parameters for only the Fe4S4 cluster plus the 4 associated cystein S-gamma atoms were adjusted by least squares methods and kept fixed during the rest of the refinement. The refined model consists of 625 of the 632 nonhydrogen atoms in the protein plus 75 water molecules. Seven side chain atoms could not be located in the final electron density map. A computer program rather than visual inspection was used wherever possible in the refinement: for locating water molecules, for removing water molecules that too closely approach other atoms, for deleting atoms that lay in regions of low electron density, and for evaluating the progress of refinement. Fo-Fc Fourier refinement is sufficiently economical to be applied routinely in protein crystal structure determinations. The complete HiPIP refinement required approximately 12 hours of CDC 3600 computer time and cost less than $3000 starting from a "trial structure," based upon multipe isomorphoous replacement phases, which gave an R of 43%...
Bacterial Proteins↗