The giant elastic protein titin is a determinant factor in how much blood fills the left ventricle during diastole, and thus in the etiology of heart disease. Titin has been identified as a target of S-glutathionylation, an end product of the nitric oxide signaling cascade that increases cardiac muscle elasticity. However, it is unknown how S-glutathionylation may regulate the elasticity of titin and cardiac tissue. Here we show that mechanical unfolding of titin immunoglobulin (Ig) domains exposes buried cysteine residues, which then can be S-glutathionylated. S-glutathionylation of cryptic cysteines greatly decreases the mechanical stability of the parent Ig domain as well as its ability to fold. Both effects favor a more extensible state of titin. Furthermore we demonstrate that S-glutathionylation of cryptic cysteines in titin mediates mechano-chemical modulation of the elasticity of human cardiomyocytes. We propose that posttranslational modification of cryptic residues is a general mechanism to regulate tissue elasticity.

Mycobacterial phosphatidylinositol mannosides (PIMs) and metabolically derived cell wall lipoglycans play important roles in host-pathogen interactions, but their biosynthetic pathways are poorly understood. Here we focus on Mycobacterium smegmatis PimA, an essential enzyme responsible for the initial mannosylation of phosphatidylinositol. The structure of PimA in complex with GDP-mannose shows the two-domain organization and the catalytic machinery typical of GT-B glycosyltransferases. PimA is an amphitrophic enzyme that binds mono-disperse phosphatidylinositol, but its transferase activity is stimulated by high concentrations of non-substrate anionic surfactants, indicating that the early stages of PIM biosynthesis involve lipid-water interfacial catalysis. Based on structural, calorimetric, and mutagenesis studies, we propose a model wherein PimA attaches to the membrane through its N-terminal domain, and this association leads to enzyme activation. Our results reveal a novel mode of phosphatidylinositol recognition and provide a template for the development of potential antimycobacterial compounds.

Force spectroscopies have emerged as a powerful and unprecedented tool to study and manipulate biomolecules directly at a molecular level. Usually, protein and DNA behavior under force is described within the framework of the worm-like chain (WLC) model for polymer elasticity. Although it has been surprisingly successful for the interpretation of experimental data, especially at high forces, the WLC model lacks structural and dynamical molecular details associated with protein relaxation under force that are key to the understanding of how force affects protein flexibility and reactivity. We use molecular dynamics simulations of ubiquitin to provide a deeper understanding of protein relaxation under force. We find that the WLC model successfully describes the simulations of ubiquitin, especially at higher forces, and we show how protein flexibility and persistence length, probed in the force regime of the experiments, are related to how specific classes of backbone dihedral angles respond to applied force. Although the WLC model is an average, backbone model, we show how the protein side chains affect the persistence length. Finally, we find that the diffusion coefficient of the protein's end-to-end distance is on the order of 10 8 nm 2 /s, is position and side-chain dependent, but is independent of the length and independent of the applied force, in contrast with other descriptions.internal diffusion | potential of mean force | protein elasticity T he development of single-molecule force spectroscopies [atomic force microscopy (AFM), and optical or magnetic tweezers] in the last two decades has opened a whole new and exciting field (1, 2). It is now possible to manipulate biomolecules directly at a molecular level and to study their behavior under force (3). It is therefore not surprising that these techniques have been applied in a broad gamut of contexts, in particular for proteins. In some cases, including enzyme catalysis (4), protein-ligand interaction (5), or folding and unfolding events (6), force is used as a probe, altering the free-energy landscape and the dynamics of the protein (7), and provides valuable kinetic and mechanistic insights. For other systems, force is of direct biological relevance [e.g., cellular adhesion (8) or muscle elasticity (9)].The elasticity of a polypeptide is typically modeled using the worm-like chain (WLC) (1, 2) model of polymer elasticity. Although this simple model from polymer physics has proven remarkably successful at describing and interpreting experimental data, it lacks molecular details associated with proteins extended under force. However, substrate flexibility to adopt the right geometry is key in many situations, including, e.g., molecular recognition (10) or enzymatic reactivity (11). Therefore, a precise understanding of how force modulates and influences protein flexibility at a single-amino acid level is essential and is not provided by the aforementioned model.From a dynamical perspective, it is still unclear how applied force affects internal diffusion ...

SummaryTuberculosis is still a leading cause of death in developing countries, for which there is an urgent need for new pharmacological agents. The synthesis of the novel antimycobacterial drug class of benzothiazinones (BTZs) and the identification of their cellular target as DprE1 (Rv3790), a component of the decaprenylphosphoryl-b-D-ribose 2Ј-epimerase complex, have been reported recently. Here, we describe the identification and characterization of a novel resistance mechanism to BTZ in Mycobacterium smegmatis. The overexpression of the nitroreductase NfnB leads to the inactivation of the drug by reduction of a critical nitro-group to an amino-group. The direct involvement of NfnB in the inactivation of the lead compound BTZ043 was demonstrated by enzymology, microbiological assays and gene knockout experiments. We also report the crystal structure of NfnB in complex with the essential cofactor flavin mononucleotide, and show that a common amino acid stretch between NfnB and DprE1 is likely to be essential for the interaction with BTZ. We performed docking analysis of NfnB-BTZ in order to understand their interaction and the mechanism of nitroreduction. Although Mycobacterium tuberculosis seems to lack nitroreductases able to inactivate these drugs, our findings are valuable for the design of new BTZ molecules, which may be more effective in vivo.