The 1.2 A crystal structure of hirustasin reveals the intrinsic flexibility of a family of highly disulphide-bridged inhibitors

Autor: George M. Sheldrick, Markus G. Grütter, Eric de La Fortelle, Gérard Bricogne, John P. Priestle, Stefania Di Marco, Peer R. E. Mittl, Isabel Usón
Rok vydání: 1999
Předmět:
Zdroj: Structure (London, England : 1993). 7(1)
ISSN: 0969-2126
Popis: Background: Leech-derived inhibitors have a prominent role in the development of new antithrombotic drugs, because some of them are able to block the blood coagulation cascade. Hirustasin, a serine protease inhibitor from the leech Hirudo medicinalis , binds specifically to tissue kallikrein and possesses structural similarity with antistasin, a potent factor Xa inhibitor from Haementeria officinalis . Although the 2.4 A structure of the hirustasin–kallikrein complex is known, classical methods such as molecular replacement were not successful in solving the structure of free hirustasin. Results: Ab initio real/reciprocal space iteration has been used to solve the structure of free hirustasin using either 1.4 A room temperature data or 1.2 A low temperature diffraction data. The structure was also solved independently from a single pseudo-symmetric gold derivative using maximum likelihood methods. A comparison of the free and complexed structures reveals that binding to kallikrein causes a hinge-bending motion between the two hirustasin subdomains. This movement is accompanied by the isomerisation of a cis proline to the trans conformation and a movement of the P3, P4 and P5 residues so that they can interact with the cognate protease. Conclusions: The inhibitors from this protein family are fairly flexible despite being highly cross-linked by disulphide bridges. This intrinsic flexibility is necessary to adopt a conformation that is recognised by the protease and to achieve an optimal fit, such observations illustrate the pitfalls of designing inhibitors based on static lock-and-key models. This work illustrates the potential of new methods of structure solution that require less or even no prior phase information.
Databáze: OpenAIRE