De novo design of allosterically switchable protein assemblies
Pillai A, Idris A, Philomin A, Weidle C, Skotheim R, Leung PJY, Broerman A, Demakis C, Borst AJ, Praetorius FM, Baker D. 2024. De novo design of allosterically switchable protein assemblies. Nature. 632, 911–920.
Download (ext.)
Journal Article
| Published
| English
Scopus indexed
Author
Pillai, Arvind;
Idris, Abbas;
Philomin, Annika;
Weidle, Connor;
Skotheim, Rebecca;
Leung, Philip J.Y.;
Broerman, Adam;
Demakis, Cullen;
Borst, Andrew J.;
Praetorius, Florian MISTA;
Baker, David
Department
Abstract
Allosteric modulation of protein function, wherein the binding of an effector to a protein triggers conformational changes at distant functional sites, plays a central part in the control of metabolism and cell signalling1,2,3. There has been considerable interest in designing allosteric systems, both to gain insight into the mechanisms underlying such ‘action at a distance’ modulation and to create synthetic proteins whose functions can be regulated by effectors4,5,6,7. However, emulating the subtle conformational changes distributed across many residues, characteristic of natural allosteric proteins, is a significant challenge8,9. Here, inspired by the classic Monod–Wyman–Changeux model of cooperativity10, we investigate the de novo design of allostery through rigid-body coupling of peptide-switchable hinge modules11 to protein interfaces12 that direct the formation of alternative oligomeric states. We find that this approach can be used to generate a wide variety of allosterically switchable systems, including cyclic rings that incorporate or eject subunits in response to peptide binding and dihedral cages that undergo effector-induced disassembly. Size-exclusion chromatography, mass photometry13 and electron microscopy reveal that these designed allosteric protein assemblies closely resemble the design models in both the presence and absence of peptide effectors and can have ligand-binding cooperativity comparable to classic natural systems such as haemoglobin14. Our results indicate that allostery can arise from global coupling of the energetics of protein substructures without optimized side-chain–side-chain allosteric communication pathways and provide a roadmap for generating allosterically triggerable delivery systems, protein nanomachines and cellular feedback control circuitry.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2024-08-14
Journal Title
Nature
Acknowledgement
We thank D. D. Sahtoe, R. D. Kiber, Y. Hsia, N. Bethel and A. Favor for helpful discussions and K. VanWormer and L. Goldschmidt for technical support. We also thank X. Li and M. Lamb for mass spectrometry support. This work was supported by the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (grant no. GR027504, A. Pillai), a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (grant no. DGE-2140004, A.I.), a Human Frontier Science Program Long Term Fellowship (grant no. LT000880/2019, F.P.), the Audacious Project at the Institute for Protein Design (A.B., A. Pillai, A. Philomin, A.I. and D.B.), a National Energy Research Scientific Computing Centre award (grant no. BER-ERCAP0022018), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (D.B.), the Open Philanthropy Project Improving Protein Design Fund (P.J.Y.L., C.D. and D.B.) a gift from Microsoft (D.B.) and a grant from DARPA supporting the Harnessing Enzymatic Activity for Lifesaving Remedies programme (grant no. HR001120S0052, contract no. HR0011-21-2-0012, D.B.).
Volume
632
Page
911–920
ISSN
eISSN
IST-REx-ID
Cite this
Pillai A, Idris A, Philomin A, et al. De novo design of allosterically switchable protein assemblies. Nature. 2024;632:911–920. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07813-2
Pillai, A., Idris, A., Philomin, A., Weidle, C., Skotheim, R., Leung, P. J. Y., … Baker, D. (2024). De novo design of allosterically switchable protein assemblies. Nature. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07813-2
Pillai, Arvind, Abbas Idris, Annika Philomin, Connor Weidle, Rebecca Skotheim, Philip J.Y. Leung, Adam Broerman, et al. “De Novo Design of Allosterically Switchable Protein Assemblies.” Nature. Springer Nature, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07813-2.
A. Pillai et al., “De novo design of allosterically switchable protein assemblies,” Nature, vol. 632. Springer Nature, pp. 911–920, 2024.
Pillai A, Idris A, Philomin A, Weidle C, Skotheim R, Leung PJY, Broerman A, Demakis C, Borst AJ, Praetorius FM, Baker D. 2024. De novo design of allosterically switchable protein assemblies. Nature. 632, 911–920.
Pillai, Arvind, et al. “De Novo Design of Allosterically Switchable Protein Assemblies.” Nature, vol. 632, Springer Nature, 2024, pp. 911–920, doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07813-2.
All files available under the following license(s):
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0):
Link(s) to Main File(s)
Access Level
![Open access file OA](https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/images/access_open.png)