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Integral membrane proteins carry out essential functions in the cell, and their activities are often modulated by specific protein-lipid interactions in the membrane. Here, we elucidate the intricate role of cardiolipin (CDL), a regulatory lipid, as a stabilizer of membrane proteins and their complexes. Using the in silico-designed model protein TMHC4_R (ROCKET) as a scaffold, we employ a combination of molecular dynamics simulations and native mass spectrometry to explore the protein features that facilitate preferential lipid interactions and mediate stabilization. We find that the spatial arrangement of positively charged residues as well as local conformational flexibility are factors that distinguish stabilizing from non-stabilizing CDL interactions. However, we also find that even in this controlled, artificial system, a clear-cut distinction between binding and stabilization is difficult to attain, revealing that overlapping lipid contacts can partially compensate for the effects of binding site mutations. Extending our insights to naturally occurring proteins, we identify a stabilizing CDL site within the E. coli rhomboid intramembrane protease GlpG and uncover its regulatory influence on enzyme substrate preference. In this work, we establish a framework for engineering functional lipid interactions, paving the way for the design of proteins with membrane-specific properties or functions.

Disordered regions are an important functional feature of many multidomain proteins. A prime example is proteins in membraneless organelles, which contain folded domains that engage in specific interactions and disordered low-complexity (LC) domains that mediate liquid-liquid phase separation. Studying these complex architectures remains challenging due to their conformational variability. Native mass spectrometry (nMS) is routinely employed to analyze conformations and interactions of folded or disordered proteins; however, its ability to analyze proteins with disordered LC domains has not been investigated. Here, we analyze the ionization and conformational states of designed model proteins that recapitulate key features of proteins found in membraneless organelles. Our results show that charge state distributions (CSDs) in nMS reflect partial disorder regardless of the protein sequence, providing insights into their conformational plasticity and interactions. By applying the same CSD analysis to a spider silk protein fragment, we find that interactions between folded domains that trigger silk assembly simultaneously induce conformational changes in the LC domains. Lastly, using intact nucleosomes, we demonstrate that CSDs are a good predictor for the disorder content of complex native assemblies. We conclude that nMS reliably informs about the conformational landscape of proteins with LC domains, which is crucial for understanding protein condensates in cellular environments.

Native mass spectrometry (nMS) provides insights into the structures and dynamics of biomacromolecules in their native-like states by preserving noncovalent interactions through "soft" electrospray ionization (ESI). For native proteins, the number of charges that are acquired scales with the surface area and mass. Here, we explore the effect of highly negatively charged DNA on the ESI charge of protein complexes and find a reduction of the mass-to-charge ratio as well as a greater variation. The charge state distributions of pure DNA assemblies show a lower mass-to-charge ratio than proteins due to their greater density in the gas phase, whereas the charge of protein-DNA complexes can additionally be influenced by the distribution of the ESI charges, ion pairing events, and collapse of the DNA components. Our findings suggest that structural features of protein-DNA complexes can result in lower charge states than expected for proteins.

Collision induced unfolding is method used with ion mobility mass spectrometry to examine protein structures and their stability. Such experiments yield information about higher order protein structures, yet are unable to provide details about the underlying processes. That information can however be provided using molecular dynamics simulations. Here, we investigate the collision induced unfolding of norovirus capsid dimers from the Norwalk and Kawasaki strains by employing molecular dynamics simulations over a range of temperatures, representing different levels of activation. The dimers have highly similar structures, but the activation reveals differences in the dynamics that arises in response to the activation.

Fractals are patterns that are self-similar across multiple length-scales¹. Macroscopic fractals are common in nature^2,3,4; however, so far, molecular assembly into fractals is restricted to synthetic systems^{5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}. Here we report the discovery of a natural protein, citrate synthase from the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus, which self-assembles into Sierpiński triangles. Using cryo-electron microscopy, we reveal how the fractal assembles from a hexameric building block. Although different stimuli modulate the formation of fractal complexes and these complexes can regulate the enzymatic activity of citrate synthase in vitro, the fractal may not serve a physiological function in vivo. We use ancestral sequence reconstruction to retrace how the citrate synthase fractal evolved from non-fractal precursors, and the results suggest it may have emerged as a harmless evolutionary accident. Our findings expand the space of possible protein complexes and demonstrate that intricate and regulatable assemblies can evolve in a single substitution.

Single particle imaging of proteins in the gas phase with x-ray free-electron lasers holds great potential to study fast protein dynamics, but is currently limited by weak and noisy data. A further challenge is to discover the proteins' orientation as each protein is randomly oriented when exposed to x-rays. Algorithms such as the expand, maximize, and compress (EMC) exist that can solve the orientation problem and reconstruct the three-dimensional diffraction intensity space, given sufficient measurements. If information about orientation were known, for example, by using an electric field to orient the particles, the reconstruction would benefit and potentially reach better results. We used simulated diffraction experiments to test how the reconstructions from EMC improve with particles' orientation to a preferred axis. Our reconstructions converged to correct maps of the three-dimensional diffraction space with fewer measurements if biased orientation information was considered. Even for a moderate bias, there was still significant improvement. Biased orientations also substantially improved the results in the case of missing central information, in particular in the case of small datasets. The effects were even more significant when adding a background with 50% the strength of the averaged diffraction signal photons to the diffraction patterns, sometimes reducing the data requirement for convergence by a factor of 10. This demonstrates the usefulness of having biased orientation information in single particle imaging experiments, even for a weaker bias than what was previously known. This could be a key component in overcoming the problems with background noise that currently plague these experiments.

Native mass spectrometry (MS) is widely employed to study the structures and assemblies of proteins ranging from small monomers to megadalton complexes. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is a useful complement as it provides the spatial detail that native MS cannot offer. However, MD simulations performed in the gas phase have suffered from rapidly increasing computational costs with the system size. The primary bottleneck is the calculation of electrostatic forces, which are effective over long distances and must be explicitly computed for each atom pair, precluding efficient use of methods traditionally used to accelerate condensed-phase simulations. As a result, MD simulations have been unable to match the capacity of MS in probing large multimeric protein complexes. Here, we apply the fast multipole method (FMM) for computing the electrostatic forces, recently implemented by Kohnke et al. (J. Chem. Theory Comput.,2020, 16, 6938-6949), showing that it significantly enhances the performance of gas-phase simulations of large proteins. We assess how to achieve adequate accuracy and optimal performance with FMM, finding that it expands the accessible size range and time scales dramatically. Additionally, we simulate a 460 kDa ferritin complex over microsecond time scales, alongside complementary ion mobility (IM)-MS experiments, uncovering conformational changes that are not apparent from the IM-MS data alone.

MS SPIDOC is a novel sample delivery system designed for single (isolated) particle imaging at X-ray Free-Electron Lasers that is adaptable towards most large-scale facility beamlines. Biological samples can range from small proteins to MDa particles. Following nano-electrospray ionization, ionic samples can be m/z-filtered and structurally separated before being oriented at the interaction zone. Here, we present the simulation package developed alongside this prototype. The first part describes how the front-to-end ion trajectory simulations have been conducted. Highlighted is a quadrant lens; a simple but efficient device that steers the ion beam within the vicinity of the strong DC orientation field in the interaction zone to ensure spatial overlap with the X-rays. The second part focuses on protein orientation and discusses its potential with respect to diffractive imaging methods. Last, coherent diffractive imaging of prototypical T = 1 and T = 3 norovirus capsids is shown. We use realistic experimental parameters from the SPB/SFX instrument at the European XFEL to demonstrate that low-resolution diffractive imaging data (q < 0.3 nm⁻¹) can be collected with only a few X-ray pulses. Such low-resolution data are sufficient to distinguish between both symmetries of the capsids, allowing to probe low abundant species in a beam if MS SPIDOC is used as sample delivery.

An A129G/R134V/S166G triple mutant of fructose 6-phosphate aldolase (FSA) from Escherichia coli was further engineered with the goal to generate new enzyme variants capable of catalyzing aldol reactions between aryl substituted ketones and aldehydes. Residues L107 and L163 were subjected to saturation mutagenesis and the resulting library of FSA variants was screened for catalytic activity with 2-hydroxyacetophenone and phenylacetaldehyde as substrates. A selection of aldolase variants was identified that catalyze the synthesis of 2,3-dihydroxy-1,4-diphenylbutanone. The most active enzyme variants contained an L163C substitution. An L107C/L163C variant was further tested for activity with substituted phenylacetaldehydes, and was shown to afford the production of the corresponding diphenyl substituted butanones with good diastereoselectivities (anti : syn dr of 10 to 30) and reasonable to good enantioselectivities of syn enantiomers (er of 5 to 25).

Many protein condensates can convert to fibrillar aggregates, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of spider silk proteins, spidroins, suggests a regulatory switch between both states. Here, we combine microscopy and native mass spectrometry to investigate the influence of protein sequence, ions, and regulatory domains on spidroin LLPS. We find that salting out-effects drive LLPS via low-affinity stickers in the repeat domains. Interestingly, conditions that enable LLPS simultaneously cause dissociation of the dimeric C-terminal domain (CTD), priming it for aggregation. Since the CTD enhances LLPS of spidroins but is also required for their conversion into amyloid-like fibers, we expand the stickers and spacers-model of phase separation with the concept of folded domains as conditional stickers that represent regulatory units.