With the current access to the whole genomes of various organisms and the completion of the first draft of the human genome, there is a strong need for a structure-function classification of protein families as an initial step in moving from DNA databases to a comprehensive understanding of human biology. As a result of the explosion in nucleic acid sequence information and the concurrent development of methods for high-throughput functional characterization of gene products, the genomic revolution also promises to provide a new paradigm for drug discovery, enabling the identification of molecular drug targets in a significant number of human diseases. This molecular view of diseases has contributed to the importance of combining primary sequence data with three-dimensional structure and has increased the awareness of computational homology modeling and its potential to elucidate protein function. In particular, when important proteins or novel therapeutic targets are identified-like the family of protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) (reviewed in reference 53)-a structure-function classification of such protein families becomes an invaluable framework for further advances in biomedical science. Here, we present a comparative analysis of the structural relationships among vertebrate PTP domains and provide a comprehensive resource for sequence analysis of phosphotyrosine-specific PTPs.PTPs are a key group of signal transduction enzymes which, together with protein tyrosine kinases, control the levels of cellular protein tyrosine phosphorylation. Protein tyrosine kinases phosphorylate cellular substrates on tyrosine residues, and much progress has been made over the last 20 years in elucidating their significance in signal transduction (for reviews, see references 26, 30, 31, 33, 71, and 72). However, it is only recently that the complexities of the PTPs have been appreciated. Thus, today it is recognized that the capacity of PTPs to dephosphorylate phosphotyrosine residues selectively on their substrates plays a pivotal role in initiating, sustaining and terminating cellular signaling (for reviews, see references 1, 4, 19, 32, 35, 46, 55, and 83). It has been shown that both the catalytic domain and noncatalytic segments of the PTPs contribute to the definition of substrate specificity in vivo. Whereas noncatalytic domains may target the PTPs to specific intracellular compartments in which the effective local concentration of substrate is high (3, 19, 51), the PTP catalytic domains themselves confer site-selective protein dephosphorylation by recognizing both the phosphotyrosine residue to be dephosphorylated and its flanking amino acids in the substrate. The combination of structural studies, kinetic analysis of PTP domains (37,74,76,90,91,96), and studies involving substratetrapping mutants (20,23,89) as well as PTP chimeras (60, 82) has convincingly demonstrated that isolated PTP domains may exhibit exquisite substrate selectivity.The structurally conserved PTP domain defines membership of the PTP family, and ...

GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) is an incretin released from intestinal L-cells in response to food intake. Activation of the GLP-1 receptor potentiates the synthesis and release of insulin from pancreatic β-cells in a glucose-dependent manner. The GLP-1 receptor belongs to class B of the G-protein-coupled receptors, a subfamily characterized by a large N-terminal extracellular ligand binding domain. Exendin-4 and GLP-1 are 50% identical, and exendin-4 is a full agonist with similar affinity and potency for the GLP-1 receptor. We recently solved the crystal structure of the GLP-1 receptor extracellular domain in complex with the competitive antagonist exendin-4(9–39). Interestingly, the isolated extracellular domain binds exendin-4 with much higher affinity than the endogenous agonist GLP-1. Here, we have solved the crystal structure of the extracellular domain in complex with GLP-1 to 2.1 Åresolution. The structure shows that important hydrophobic ligand-receptor interactions are conserved in agonist- and antagonist-bound forms of the extracellular domain, but certain residues in the ligand-binding site adopt a GLP-1-specific conformation. GLP-1 is a kinked but continuous α-helix from Thr13 to Val33 when bound to the extracellular domain. We supplemented the crystal structure with site-directed mutagenesis to link the structural information of the isolated extracellular domain with the binding properties of the full-length receptor. The data support the existence of differences in the binding modes of GLP-1 and exendin-4 on the full-length GLP-1 receptor.

X-ray reflectivity measurements reveal a significant dewetting of a large hydrophobic paraffin surface floating on water. The dewetting phenomenon extends less than 15 A into the bulk water phase and results in an integrated density deficit of about one water molecule per 25-30 A(2) of water in contact with the paraffin surface. The results are supported by molecular dynamics simulations and related to the hydrophobic effect.

It is well established that small sugars exert different types of stabilization of biomembranes both in vivo and in vitro. However, the essential question of whether sugars are bound to or expelled from membrane surfaces, i.e., the sign and size of the free energy of the interaction, remains unresolved, and this prevents a molecular understanding of the stabilizing mechanism. We have used smallangle neutron scattering and thermodynamic measurements to show that sugars may be either bound or expelled depending on the concentration of sugar. At low concentration, small sugars bind quite strongly to a lipid bilayer, and the accumulation of sugar at the interface makes the membrane thinner and laterally expanded. Above ∼0.2 M the sugars gradually become expelled from the membrane surface, and this repulsive mode of interaction counteracts membrane thinning. The dual nature of sugar-membrane interactions offers a reconciliation of conflicting views in earlier reports on sugar-induced modulations of membrane properties.membrane interface | membrane structure | preferential binding | preferential exclusion | interaction free energy S mall sugars such as the disaccharides sucrose and trehalose are among the so-called osmolytes (1) or compensatory solutes (2), which are accumulated in response to environmental stress in virtually all taxa. Their function is to act as inert regulators of the osmotic pressure, but they also optimize the physical properties of the cytosol (3) and stabilize biomolecular conformations against cold, drought, and heat (4-7). The same small carbohydrates have also proven useful in vitro as protectants or excipients for biopreservation (8). Many reports have shown that membranous structures are particularly stabilized by small sugars (4, 6, 9), but the definition of stabilization covers a wide range of biological and physical parameters. Thus, studies on intact cells have documented improved survival following exposure to heat, cold, drought, or chemical stressors (6,10,11). Other works have analyzed stabilization on the basis of phenomenological properties of model membranes, for example, the leakage or intermixing of probes in liposomes (12, 13). Finally, stability has been discussed with respect to rigorous physical parameters such as the structure or mechanical properties of lipid bilayers (14, 15). The current work addresses membrane dimensions and the thermodynamics of interaction with the purpose of elucidating fundamental aspects of membrane-sugar interrelationships. The different observations of sugar stabilization have sparked a large number of studies on sugars and model membranes (usually phospholipid bilayers) over the past 30 y. Investigations of fully hydrated membranes show an interesting tendency to fall into two groups with mutually conflicting conclusions. Thus, many investigations have suggested direct (favorable) interaction of sugars and the phospholipid interface (16-23), and it is obvious that such interactions could be the origin of sugar effects, for example, through int...

From molecular dynamics simulations of a dipalmitoyl-phosphatidyl-choline (DPPC) lipid bilayer in the liquid crystalline phase, pressure profiles through the bilayer are calculated by different methods. These profiles allow us to address two central and unresolved problems in pressure profile calculations: The first problem is that the pressure profile is not uniquely defined since the expression for the local pressure involves an arbitrary choice of an integration contour. We have investigated two different choices leading to the Irving-Kirkwood (IK) and Harasima (H) expressions for the local pressure tensor. For these choices we find that the pressure profile is almost independent of the contour used, which indicates that the local pressure is well defined for a DPPC bilayer in the liquid crystalline phase. This may not be the case for other systems and we therefore suggest that both the IK and H profiles are calculated in order to test the uniqueness of the profile. The second problem is how to include electrostatic interactions in pressure profile calculations when the simulations are conducted without truncating the electrostatic potential, i.e., using the Ewald summation technique. Based on the H expression for the local pressure, we present a method for calculating the contribution to the lateral components of the local pressure tensor from electrostatic interactions evaluated by the Ewald summation technique. Pressure profiles calculated with an electrostatic potential truncation (cutoff) from simulations conducted with Ewald summation are shown to depend on the cutoff in a subtle manner which is attributed to the existence of long-ranged charge ordering in the system. However, the pressure profiles calculated with relatively long cutoffs are qualitatively similar to the Ewald profile for the DPPC bilayer studied here.