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Functional Plasticity and Evolutionary Adaptation of Allosteric Regulation

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Functional Plasticity and Evolutionary Adaptation of Allosteric Regulation Functional plasticity and evolutionary adaptation of allosteric regulation Megan Leandera, Yuchen Yuanb, Anthony Megera, Qiang Cuib, and Srivatsan Ramana,c,1 aDepartment of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706; bDepartment of Chemistry, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215; and cDepartment of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706 Edited by William F. DeGrado, University of California, San Francisco, CA, and approved September 1, 2020 (received for review February 11, 2020) Allostery is a fundamental regulatory mechanism of protein function. and restored function through alternative paths by systematic, Despite notable advances, understanding the molecular determinants protein-wide mutational scanning. This revealed remarkable of allostery remains an elusive goal. Our current knowledge of allostery functional plasticity as allosteric switchability could be recon- is principally shaped by a structure-centric view, which makes it difficult stituted after disruption through myriad mutational combinations. to understand the decentralized character of allostery. We present a While the degree of functional plasticity is site-specific, structural function-centric approach using deep mutational scanning to elucidate models indicate that recovery of function may be commonly the molecular basis and underlying functional landscape of allostery. achieved through modulation of DNA or ligand interactions. We show that allosteric signaling exhibits a high degree of functional Phylogenetic analysis revealed that residues critical for allosteric plasticity and redundancy through myriad mutational pathways. Resi- signaling are surprisingly poorly conserved while those required dues critical for allosteric signaling are surprisingly poorly conserved for structural integrity are highly conserved. This suggests stronger while those required for structural integrity are highly conserved, sug- evolutionary pressure to preserve fold over function. Molecular gesting evolutionary pressure to preserve fold over function. Our re- dynamics (MD) simulations showed conformational distributions sults suggest multiple solutions to the thermodynamic conditions of of wildtype are distinct from those of a disrupted mutant but cooperativity, in contrast to the common view of a finely tuned allo- strikingly similar to a rescued mutant, suggesting different muta- steric residue network maintained under selection. tional paths lead to the same functional state. Our comprehensive function-centric framework is applicable to other allosteric pro- allostery | deep mutational scanning | functional plasticity | molecular teins and can lead to a biochemical understanding of disease- BIOCHEMISTRY dynamics simulation associated mutations, discovery of druggable allosteric sites, and broad molecular principles of allostery. ellular processes are mediated by intermolecular and intra- Cmolecular interactions of proteins. Allostery is the intra- Plasticity of Allostery molecular modulation of protein activity through perturbation at Our model system is tetracycline repressor (TetR, 207 residues), a distal site and constitutes a dominant mode of posttranslational an all-helical (α1–α9), dimeric bacterial TF comprised of ligand- regulation of proteins. Over the decades, we have made major and DNA-binding domains (LBD and DBD) (SI Appendix, Fig. strides in gaining an atomic-level understanding of how proteins S1). As with all allosteric proteins, inactive and active states of BIOPHYSICS AND COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY fold, catalyze reactions, and interact with other biomolecules. TetR correspond to distinct free energy minima (14). TetR re- However, understanding the molecular rules governing allostery, presses gene expression by binding to a promoter (inactive state), a fundamental property of proteins, remains an elusive goal 60 y and ligand induction releases TetR from that promoter (active after its discovery (1–3). The knowledge gap exists because the decentralized character of allostery makes it challenging to in- Significance tuitively understand and predict how a distal residue affects an active site some 40–50 Å away (4). Mechanisms of catalysis or Allostery is a fundamental mechanism by which proteins recog- binding are routinely explained by mutating a limited set of nize environmental cues and elicit a response at a distal site. Al- residues as these processes are driven by local interactions. This losteric signaling is essential in the regulation of myriad cellular classical reductionist approach of studying function with a lim- processes, yet its molecular basis is poorly understood. Compared ited set of mutations does not scale for a systemic, protein-wide to traditional approaches that rely on structure to understand property like allostery as it explores only a small fraction of allostery, we chose a high-throughput function-centric approach. available sequence space. Therefore, our current understanding Using systematic mutagenesis, we found allosteric signaling to be of allostery is principally shaped by a structure-centric paradigm highly adaptable where a mutation that inactivates allostery can based either on conformational heterogeneity (induced fit and – be functionally compensated by another distal mutation. Al- conformational selection) (5 8), comparison of crystallographic though functionally important, allosteric hotspots, residues critical snapshots to infer residues linking allosteric and active sites (9), for signaling, were poorly conserved. In contrast, residues im- mapping residues undergoing correlated motion by NMR (10, portant for structural stability are significantly conserved, sug- 11), or identifying coevolving residues (12). In rare instances, gesting evolution selects fold over function. Our approach can when functional screens were painstakingly carried out, they lead to broad molecular principles of allostery. revealed complex allosteric networks that cannot be gleaned by examining the structure alone (13). Therefore, while structure Author contributions: M.L., Y.Y., Q.C., and S.R. designed research; M.L., Y.Y., and A.M. offers vital clues, validating the functional contribution of a performed research; M.L., Y.Y., A.M., Q.C., and S.R. analyzed data; and M.L., Y.Y., Q.C., residue is the clearest evidence of its role in allostery. and S.R. wrote the paper. Here, we reframe the problem by advancing a function-centric The authors declare no competing interest. approach guided by structure and free energy calculations to This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. elucidate the molecular basis and the functional landscape of Published under the PNAS license. allostery. Allosteric switchability is defined as the ability to switch 1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: [email protected]. between inactive and active states in a ligand-dependent manner. This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/ To investigate the underlying functional landscape, we disrupted doi:10.1073/pnas.2002613117/-/DCSupplemental. allosteric switchability of a bacterial transcription factor (TF) First published September 30, 2020. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2002613117 PNAS | October 13, 2020 | vol. 117 | no. 41 | 25445–25454 Downloaded by guest on September 24, 2021 state) resulting in transcription. In simplified terms, allosteric there could be an upper limit to reconstitution of function for switching occurs because free energy of ligand binding is greater individual dead variants (with double mutant screening). Sites for thanthefreeenergydifferencebetweeninactiveandactivestates, compensatory mutations were within 10–20 Å and others as far as which provides the necessary driving force for conformational 40–50 Å away from the site of mutation in the dead variant stabilization (Fig. 1A, ΔGLIG > ΔGDIFF,WT) (15). Detailed ther- (Fig. 1D), suggesting that allosterically coupled residues in TetR modynamics are described in SI Appendix,Fig.S2. A mutated TetR are distributed across the protein. Since the five dead variants may no longer be ligand-inducible if the mutation, without reduc- have no unique attribute except that they are in different regions ing ligand affinity, increases free energy difference (ΔGDIFF)be- of the protein, we concluded that other dead variants might also tween inactive and active states by stabilizing the inactive state, be rescued by distal compensatory mutations. Such a distributed destabilizing the active state, or both. We term these variants network of allosterically coupled pairs of residues with no ap- “locked” in a constitutively inactive state as “dead” (Fig. 1A, parent spatial relationship suggests that satisfying thermodynamic ΔGLIG < ΔGDIFF,D). A dead variant may be rescued by a com- conditions of cooperativity may be sufficient to maintain allostery pensatory mutation(s) that restores wildtype-like free energy dif- in TetR. ference (Fig. 1A, ΔGLIG > ΔGR); this we term a “rescued” variant. Several important insights emerged from these results. First, To characterize the plasticity of allosteric networks, we devised a TetR exhibits a high degree of allosteric plasticity evidenced by “disrupt-and-restore” strategy. This two-stage, high-throughput, the ease of disrupting and restoring function through several GFP-based mutational screen (16) of TetR involves first disrupting mutational paths. This suggests the functional landscape of al- and subsequently restoring allosteric signaling (Fig. 1B). We used lostery is dense with
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