Hinge-shift mechanism as a protein design principle for the evolution of beta-lactamases from substrate promiscuity to specificity.
Modi, T., Risso, V.A., Martinez-Rodriguez, S., Gavira, J.A., Mebrat, M.D., Van Horn, W.D., Sanchez-Ruiz, J.M., Banu Ozkan, S.(2021) Nat Commun 12: 1852-1852
- PubMed: 33767175 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22089-0
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
6YRS - PubMed Abstract: 
TEM-1 β-lactamase degrades β-lactam antibiotics with a strong preference for penicillins. Sequence reconstruction studies indicate that it evolved from ancestral enzymes that degraded a variety of β-lactam antibiotics with moderate efficiency. This generalist to specialist conversion involved more than 100 mutational changes, but conserved fold and catalytic residues, suggesting a role for dynamics in enzyme evolution. Here, we develop a conformational dynamics computational approach to rationally mold a protein flexibility profile on the basis of a hinge-shift mechanism. By deliberately weighting and altering the conformational dynamics of a putative Precambrian β-lactamase, we engineer enzyme specificity that mimics the modern TEM-1 β-lactamase with only 21 amino acid replacements. Our conformational dynamics design thus re-enacts the evolutionary process and provides a rational allosteric approach for manipulating function while conserving the enzyme active site.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Department of Physics and Center for Biological Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.