The research on protein dynamics of our project partners Loschmidt Laboratories (Department of Experimental Biology and RECETOX, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University) and International Clinical Research Center, St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno has been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.
Below is a short summary to give you an overview. You can access the full article on Nature Communications.
We track the role of dynamics in evolution, starting from the evolvable and thermostable ancestral protein AncHLD-RLuc which catalyses both dehalogenase and luciferase reactions. Insertion-deletion backbone mutagenesis of AncHLD-RLuc challenged the scaffold dynamics. Screening for both activities reveals mutations localized in three distinct regions that lead to altered protein dynamics. Transplantation of a highly dynamic fragment leads to highly stable glow-type bioluminescence. The success of our approach suggests that a strategy comprising (i) constructing a stable and evolvable template, (ii) mapping functional regions by backbone mutagenesis, and (iii) transplantation of dynamic features, can lead to functionally innovative proteins.
