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Blue copper proteins: A comparative analysis of their molecular interaction properties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2000

F. DE RIENZO
Affiliation:
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Postfach 10 2209, Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69012 Heidelberg, Germany Universita' degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Chimica, Via Campi 183, 41100 Modena, Italy
R.R. GABDOULLINE
Affiliation:
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Postfach 10 2209, Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69012 Heidelberg, Germany Institute of Mathematical Problems in Biology, RAS, Pushchino, Moscow Region 142292, Russia
M.C. MENZIANI
Affiliation:
Universita' degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Chimica, Via Campi 183, 41100 Modena, Italy
R.C. WADE
Affiliation:
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Postfach 10 2209, Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69012 Heidelberg, Germany
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Abstract

Blue copper proteins are type-I copper-containing redox proteins whose role is to shuttle electrons from an electron donor to an electron acceptor in bacteria and plants. A large amount of experimental data is available on blue copper proteins; however, their functional characterization is hindered by the complexity of redox processes in biological systems. We describe here the application of a semiquantitative method based on a comparative analysis of molecular interaction fields to gain insights into the recognition properties of blue copper proteins. Molecular electrostatic and hydrophobic potentials were computed and compared for a set of 33 experimentally-determined structures of proteins from seven blue copper subfamilies, and the results were quantified by means of similarity indices. The analysis provides a classification of the blue copper proteins and shows that (1) comparison of the molecular electrostatic potentials provides useful information complementary to that highlighted by sequence analysis; (2) similarities in recognition properties can be detected for proteins belonging to different subfamilies, such as amicyanins and pseudoazurins, that may be isofunctional proteins; (3) dissimilarities in interaction properties, consistent with experimentally different binding specificities, may be observed between proteins belonging to the same subfamily, such as cyanobacterial and eukaryotic plastocyanins; (4) proteins with low sequence identity, such as azurins and pseudoazurins, can have sufficient similarity to bind to similar electron donors and acceptors while having different binding specificity profiles.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 The Protein Society

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