title: Genomic evidence that the intracellular proteins of archaeal microbes contain disulfide bonds.
abstract: Disulfide bonds have only rarely been found in intracellular proteins. That pattern is consistent with the chemically reducing environment inside the cells of well-studied organisms. However, recent experiments and new calculations based on genomic data of archaea provide striking contradictions to this pattern. Our results indicate that the intracellular proteins of certain hyperthermophilic archaea, especially the crenarchaea Pyrobaculum aerophilum and Aeropyrum pernix, are rich in disulfide bonds. This finding implicates disulfide bonding in stabilizing many thermostable proteins and points to novel chemical environments inside these microbes. These unexpected results illustrate the wealth of biochemical insights available from the growing reservoir of genomic data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Department of Energy Center for Genomics and Proteomics, Molecular Biology Institute, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569, USA.
authors.forename: Parag
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mallick
authors.forename: Daniel R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Boutz
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Eisenberg
authors.forename: Todd O
authors.initials: TO
authors.lastname: Yeates
mesh_terms: D019843:Archaeal Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D004220:Disulfides / Q000032:analysis*; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics; D020745:Genome, Archaeal; D008667:Metalloproteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D010802:Phylogeny; D011487:Protein Conformation; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000235:genetics; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein
chemical_list: D019843:Archaeal Proteins; D004220:Disulfides; D008667:Metalloproteins