Biology subjects

Koehler Leman, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Koehler Leman, J..

9 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Large protein databases reveal structural complementarity and functional locality

Recent breakthroughs in protein structure prediction have led to an unprecedented surge in high-quality 3D models, highlighting the need for efficient computational solutions to manage and analyze this wealth of structural data. In our work, we comprehensively examine the structural clusters obtained from the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database (AFDB), a high-quality subset of ESMAtlas, and the Microbiome Immunity Project (MIP). We create a single cohesive low-dimensional representation of the resulting protein space. Our results show that, while each database occupies distinct regions within the protein structure space, they collectively exhibit significant overlap in their functional profiles. High-level biological functions tend to cluster in particular regions, revealing a shared functional landscape despite the diverse sources of data. By creating a single, cohesive low-dimensional representation of protein structure space integrating data from diverse sources, localizing functional annotations within this space, and providing an open-access web-server for exploration, this work offers insights for future research concerning protein sequence-structure-function relationships, enabling various biological questions to be asked about taxonomic assignments, environmental factors, or functional specificity. This approach is generalizable to other or future datasets, enabling further discovery beyond findings presented here.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2023

Modeling membrane geometries implicitly in Rosetta

Interactions between membrane proteins (MPs) and lipid bilayers are critical for many cellular functions. In the Rosetta molecular modeling suite, the implicit membrane energy function is based on a "slab" model, which represent the membrane as a flat bilayer. However, in nature membranes often have a curvature that is important for function and/or stability. Even more prevalent, in structural biology research MPs are reconstituted in model membrane systems such as micelles, bicelles, nanodiscs, or liposomes. Thus, we have modified the existing membrane energy potentials within the RosettaMP framework to allow users to model MPs in different membrane geometries. We show that these modifications can be utilized in core applications within Rosetta such as structure refinement, protein-protein docking, and protein design. For MPs structures found in curved membranes, refining these structures in curved, implicit membranes produces higher quality models with structures closer to experimentally determined structures. For MP systems embedded in multiple membranes, representing both membranes results in more favorable scores compared to only representing one of the membranes. Modeling MPs in geometries mimicking the membrane model system used in structure determination can improve model quality and model discrimination.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2022

Sequence-structure-function relationships in the microbial protein universe

Abstract / SummaryFor the past half-century, structural biologists relied on the notion that similar protein sequences give rise to similar structures and functions. While this assumption has driven research to explore certain parts of the protein universe, it disregards spaces that dont rely on this assumption. Here we explore areas of the protein universe where similar protein functions can be achieved by different sequences and different structures. We predict [~]200,000 structures for diverse protein sequences from 1,003 representative genomes1 across the microbial tree of life, and annotate them functionally on a per-residue basis. Structure prediction is accomplished using the World Community Grid, a large-scale citizen science initiative. The resulting database of structural models is complementary to the AlphaFold database, with regards to domains of life as well as sequence diversity and sequence length. We identify 148 novel folds and describe examples where we map specific functions to structural motifs. We also show that the structural space is continuous and largely saturated, highlighting the need for shifting the focus from obtaining structures to putting them into context, to transform all branches of biology, including a shift from sequence-based to sequence-structure-function based meta-omics analyses.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2021

Ensuring scientific reproducibility in bio-macromolecular modeling via extensive, automated benchmarks

Each year vast international resources are wasted on irreproducible research. The scientific community has been slow to adopt standard software engineering practices, despite the increases in high-dimensional data, complexities of workflows, and computational environments. Here we show how scientific software applications can be created in a reproducible manner when simple design goals for reproducibility are met. We describe the implementation of a test server framework and 40 scientific benchmarks, covering numerous applications in Rosetta bio-macromolecular modeling. High performance computing cluster integration allows these benchmarks to run continuously and automatically. Detailed protocol captures are useful for developers and users of Rosetta and other macromolecular modeling tools. The framework and design concepts presented here are valuable for developers and users of any type of scientific software and for the scientific community to create reproducible methods. Specific examples highlight the utility of this framework and the comprehensive documentation illustrates the ease of adding new tests in a matter of hours.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2020

Specificities of modeling membrane proteins using multi-template homology modeling

Structures of membrane proteins are challenging to determine experimentally and currently represent only about 2% of the structures in the ProteinDataBank. Because of this disparity, methods for modeling membrane proteins are fewer and of lower quality than those for modeling soluble proteins. However, better expression, crystallization, and cryo-EM techniques have prompted a recent increase in experimental structures of membrane proteins, which can act as templates to predict the structure of closely related proteins through homology modeling. Because homology modeling relies on a structural template, it is easier and more accurate than fold recognition methods or de novo modeling, which are used when the sequence similarity between the query sequence and the sequence of related proteins in structural databases is below 25%. In homology modeling, a query sequence is mapped onto the coordinates of a single template and refined. With the increase in available templates, several templates often cover overlapping segments of the query sequence. Multi-template modeling can be used to identify the best template for local segments and join them into a single model. Here we provide a protocol for modeling membrane proteins from multiple templates in the Rosetta software suite. This approach takes advantage of several integrated frameworks, namely RosettaScripts, RosettaCM, and RosettaMP with the membrane scoring function.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2019

Integrative protein modeling in RosettaNMR from sparse paramagnetic restraints

Computational methods to predict protein structure from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) restraints that only require assignment of backbone signals hold great potential to study larger proteins and complexes. Additionally, computational methods designed to work with sparse data add atomic detail that is missing in the experimental restraints, allowing application to systems that are difficult to investigate. While specific frameworks in the Rosetta macromolecular modeling suite support the use of certain NMR restraint types, use of all commonly measured restraint types together is precluded. Here, we introduce a comprehensive framework into Rosetta that reconciles CS-Rosetta, PCS-Rosetta and RosettaNMR into a single framework, that, in addition to backbone chemical shifts and nuclear Overhauser effect distance restraints, leverages NMR restraints derived from paramagnetic labeling. Specifically, RosettaNMR incorporates pseudocontact shifts, residual dipolar couplings, and paramagnetic relaxation enhancements, measured at multiple tagging sites. We further showcase the generality of RosettaNMR for various modeling challenges and benchmark it on 28 structure prediction cases, eight symmetric assemblies, two protein-protein and three protein-ligand docking examples. Paramagnetic restraints generated more accurate models for 85% of the benchmark proteins and, when combined with chemical shifts, sampled high-accuracy models ([≤] 2[A]) in 50% of the cases.\n\nSignificance StatementComputational methods such as Rosetta can assist NMR structure determination by employing efficient conformational search algorithms alongside physically realistic energy functions to model protein structure from sparse experimental data. We have developed a framework in Rosetta that leverages paramagnetic NMR data in addition to chemical shift and nuclear Overhauser effect restraints and extends RosettaNMR calculations to the prediction of symmetric assemblies, protein-protein and protein-ligand complexes. RosettaNMR generated high-accuracy models ([≤] 2[A]) in 50% of cases for a benchmark set of 28 monomeric and eight symmetric proteins and predicted protein-protein and protein-ligand interfaces with up to 1[A] accuracy. The method expands Rosettas rich toolbox for integrative data-driven modeling and promises to be broadly useful in structural biology.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2017

A novel domain assembly routine for creating full-length models of membrane proteins from known domain structures

Membrane proteins composed of soluble and membrane domains are often studied one domain at a time. However, to understand the biological function of entire protein systems and their interactions with each other and drugs, knowledge of full-length structures or models is required. Although few computational methods exist that could potentially be used to model full-length constructs of membrane proteins, none of these methods are perfectly suited for the problem at hand. Existing methods either require an interface or knowledge of the relative orientations of the domains, are not designed for domain assembly, and none of them are developed for membrane proteins. Here we describe the first domain assembly protocol specifically designed for membrane proteins that assembles intra- and extracellular soluble domains and the transmembrane domain into models of the full-length membrane protein. Our protocol does not require an interface between the domains and samples possible domain orientations based on backbone dihedrals in the flexible linker regions, created via fragment insertion, while keeping the transmembrane domain fixed in the membrane. Our method, mp_domain_assembly, implemented in RosettaMP samples domain orientations close to the native structure and is best used in conjunction with experimental data to reduce the conformational search space.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2017

Comparison Of NMR And Crystal Structures Of Membrane Proteins And Computational Refinement To Improve Model Quality

Membrane proteins are challenging to study and restraints for structure determination are typically sparse or of low resolution because the membrane environment that surrounds them leads to a variety of experimental challenges. When membrane protein structures are determined by different techniques in different environments, a natural question is \"which structure is most biologically relevant?\" Towards answering this question, we compiled a dataset of membrane proteins with known structures determined by both solution NMR and X-ray crystallography. By investigating differences between the structures, we found that RMSDs between crystal and NMR structures are below 5 [A] in the membrane region, NMR ensembles have a higher convergence in the membrane region, crystal structures typically have a straighter transmembrane region, have higher stereo-chemical correctness, and are more tightly packed. After quantifying these differences, we used high-resolution refinement of the NMR structures to mitigate them, which paves the way for identifying and improving the structural quality of membrane proteins.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2016

Computing structure-based lipid accessibility of membrane proteins with mp_lipid_acc in RosettaMP

BackgroundMembrane proteins are vastly underrepresented in structural databases, which has led to a lack of computational tools and the corresponding inappropriate use of tools designed for soluble proteins. For membrane proteins, lipid accessibility is an essential property. Even though programs are available for sequence-based prediction of lipid accessibility and structure-based identification of solvent-accessible surface area, the latter does not distinguish between water accessible and lipid accessible residues in membrane proteins.\n\nResultsHere we present mp_lipid_acc, the first method to identify lipid accessible residues from the protein structure, implemented in the RosettaMP framework and available as a webserver. Our method uses protein structures transformed in membrane coordinates, for instance from PDBTM or OPM databases, and a defined membrane thickness to classify lipid accessibility of residues. mp_lipid_acc is applicable to both -helical and {beta}-barrel membrane proteins of diverse architectures with or without water-filled pores and uses a concave hull algorithm for classification. We further provide a manually curated benchmark dataset, on which our method achieves prediction accuracies of 90%.\n\nConclusionWe present a novel tool to classify lipid accessibility from the protein structure, which is applicable to proteins of diverse architectures and achieves prediction accuracies of 90% on a manually curated database. mp_lipid_acc is part of the Rosetta software suite, available at www.rosettacommons.org. The webserver is available at http://rosie.graylab.jhu.edu/mp_lipid_acc/submit and the benchmark dataset is available at http://tinyurl.com/mp-lipid-acc-dataset.\n\nSupplementary informationSupplementary information is available at BMC Bioinformatics.

biophysics↗