title: Blue copper proteins: a comparative analysis of their molecular interaction properties.
abstract: Blue copper proteins are type-I copper-containing redox proteins whose role is to shuttle electrons from an electron donor to an electron acceptor in bacteria and plants. A large amount of experimental data is available on blue copper proteins; however, their functional characterization is hindered by the complexity of redox processes in biological systems. We describe here the application of a semiquantitative method based on a comparative analysis of molecular interaction fields to gain insights into the recognition properties of blue copper proteins. Molecular electrostatic and hydrophobic potentials were computed and compared for a set of 33 experimentally-determined structures of proteins from seven blue copper subfamilies, and the results were quantified by means of similarity indices. The analysis provides a classification of the blue copper proteins and shows that (I) comparison of the molecular electrostatic potentials provides useful information complementary to that highlighted by sequence analysis; (2) similarities in recognition properties can be detected for proteins belonging to different subfamilies, such as amicyanins and pseudoazurins, that may be isofunctional proteins; (3) dissimilarities in interaction properties, consistent with experimentally different binding specificities, may be observed between proteins belonging to the same subfamily, such as cyanobacterial and eukaryotic plastocyanins; (4) proteins with low sequence identity, such as azurins and pseudoazurins, can have sufficient similarity to bind to similar electron donors and acceptors while having different binding specificity profiles.
authors.affiliation: European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: De Rienzo
authors.forename: R R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Gabdoulline
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Menziani
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Wade
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D001665:Binding Sites; D003300:Copper / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray; D004579:Electron Transport; D008667:Metalloproteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D019906:Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Biomolecular; D010084:Oxidation-Reduction; D011485:Protein Binding; D011487:Protein Conformation; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D008667:Metalloproteins; C017079:mauC protein, Methylobacterium extorquens; D003300:Copper