Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank (PCDDB): data bank and website design

Integration of Experimental Data and Use of Automated Fitting Methods in Developing Protein Force Fields

The development of accurate protein force fields has been the cornerstone of molecular simulations for the past 50 years. During this period, many lessons have been learned regarding the use of experimental target data and parameter fitting procedures. Here, we review recent advances in protein force field development. We discuss the recent emergence of polarizable force fields and the role of electronic polarization and areas in which additive force fields fall short. The use of automated fitting methods and the inclusion of additional experimental solution data during parametrization is discussed as a means to highlight possible routes to improve the accuracy of force fields even further.

Circular dichroism spectral data and metadata in the Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank (PCDDB): a tutorial guide to accession and deposition

The Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank (PCDDB) is a web-based resource containing circular dichroism (CD) and synchrotron radiation circular dichroism spectral and associated metadata located at http://pcddb.cryst.bbk.ac.uk. This resource provides a freely available, user-friendly means of accessing validated CD spectra and their associated experimental details and metadata, thereby enabling broad usage of this material and new developments across the structural biology, chemistry, and bioinformatics communities. The resource also enables researchers utilizing CD as an experimental technique to have a means of storing their data at a secure site from which it is easily retrievable, thereby making their results publicly accessible, a current requirement of many grant-funding agencies world-wide, as well as meeting the data-sharing requirements for journal publications. This tutorial provides extensive information on searching, accessing, and downloading procedures for those who wish to utilize the data available in the data bank, and detailed information on deposition procedures for creating and validating entries, including comprehensive explanations of their contents and formats, for those who wish to include their data in the data bank.

The protein circular dichroism data bank, a Web-based site for access to circular dichroism spectroscopic data

The Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank (PCDDB) is a newly released resource for structural biology. It is a web-accessible (http://pcddb.cryst.bbk.ac.uk) data bank for circular dichroism (CD) and synchrotron radiation circular dichroism (SRCD) spectra and their associated experimental and secondary metadata, with links to protein sequence and structure data banks. It is designed to provide a public repository for CD spectroscopic data on macromolecules, to parallel the Protein Data Bank (PDB) for crystallographic, electron microscopic, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic data. Similarly to the PDB, it includes validation checking procedures to ensure good practice and the integrity of the deposited data. This paper reports on the first public release of the PCDDB, which provides access to spectral data that comprise standard reference datasets.

PCDDB: the Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank, a repository for circular dichroism spectral and metadata

The Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank (PCDDB) is a public repository that archives and freely distributes circular dichroism (CD) and synchrotron radiation CD (SRCD) spectral data and their associated experimental metadata. All entries undergo validation and curation procedures to ensure completeness, consistency and quality of the data included. A web-based interface enables users to browse and query sample types, sample conditions, experimental parameters and provides spectra in both graphical display format and as downloadable text files. The entries are linked, when appropriate, to primary sequence (UniProt) and structural (PDB) databases, as well as to secondary databases such as the Enzyme Commission functional classification database and the CATH fold classification database, as well as to literature citations. The PCDDB is available at: http://pcddb.cryst.bbk.ac.uk.

Protein characterisation by synchrotron radiation circular dichroism spectroscopy

Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is a well-established technique for the study of proteins. Synchrotron radiation circular dichroism (SRCD) spectroscopy extends the utility of conventional CD spectroscopy (i.e. using laboratory-based instruments) because the high light flux from a synchrotron enables collection of data to lower wavelengths, detection of spectra with higher signal-to-noise levels and measurements in the presence of strongly absorbing non-chiral components such as salts, buffers, lipids and detergents. This review describes developments in instrumentation, methodologies and bioinformatics that have enabled new applications of the SRCD technique for the study of proteins. It includes examples of the use of SRCD spectroscopy for providing static and dynamic structural information on molecules, including determinations of secondary structures of intact proteins and domains, assessment of protein stability, detection of conformational changes associated with ligand and drug binding, monitoring of environmental effects, examination of the processes of protein folding and membrane insertion, comparisons of mutant and modified proteins, identification of intermolecular interactions and complex formation, determination of the dispositions of proteins in membranes, identification of natively disordered proteins and their binding partners and examination of the carbohydrate components of glycoproteins. It also discusses how SRCD can be used in conjunction with macromolecular crystallography and other biophysical techniques to provide a more complete picture of protein structures and functions, including how proteins interact with other macromolecules and ligands. This review also includes a discussion of potential new applications in structural and functional genomics using SRCD spectroscopy and future instrumentation and bioinformatics developments that will enable such studies. Finally, the appendix describes a number of computational/bioinformatics resources for secondary structure analyses that take advantage of the improved data quality available from SRCD. In summary, this review discusses how SRCD can be used for a wide range of structural and functional studies of proteins.

Vacuum-ultraviolet circular dichroism spectroscopy of DNA: a valuable tool to elucidate topology and electronic coupling in DNA

Circular dichroism (CD) is a powerful technique to obtain information on electronic transitions and has been used extensively for studies on DNA. Most experiments are done in the UV region but new information is often revealed from extending the wavelength region down into the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) region. Such experiments are most easily carried out with synchrotron radiation (SR) light sources that provide large photon fluxes. Here we provide a summary of the SRCD data taken on different DNA strands with emphasis on results from our own laboratory within the last five years.(1-3) Signal intensities in the VUV are often significantly larger than those in the UV, and the electronic coupling between bases may increase with excitation energy. CD spectroscopy is particularly useful for investigating the extent of electronic coupling within a strand, i.e., the degree of delocalisation of the excited-state electronic wavefunction. The spatial extent of the wavefunction may be limited to just one base or it extends over two or more bases in a stack or between bases on different strands.(4,5) The actual character of the electronically excited state is linked to base composition and sequence as well as DNA folding motif (A-, B-, Z-DNA, triplexes, quadruplexes, etc.). The latter depends on experimental conditions such as solution acidity, temperature, ionic strength, and solvent.

Functional and small-angle X-ray scattering studies of a new stationary phase survival protein E (SurE) from Xylella fastidiosa--evidence of allosteric behaviour

The genome data of bacterium Xylella fastidiosa strain 9a5c has identified several orfs related to its phytopathogenic adaptation and survival. Among these genes, the surE codifies a survival protein E (XfSurE) whose function is not so well understood, but functional assays in Escherichia coli revealed nucleotidase and exopolyphosphate activity. In the present study, we report the XfSurE protein overexpression in E. coli and its purification. The overall secondary structure was analyzed by CD. Small-angle X-ray scattering and gel filtration techniques demonstrated that the oligomeric state of the protein in solution is a tetramer. In addition, functional kinetics experiments were carried out with several monophosphate nucleoside substrates and revealed a highly positive cooperativity. An allosteric mechanism involving torsion movements in solution is proposed to explain the cooperative behaviour of XfSurE. This is the first characterization of a SurE enzyme from a phytopathogen organism and, to our knowledge, the first solution structure of a SurE protein to be described.