Discovery of a novel conformational equilibrium in urokinase-type plasminogen activator

Abstract Although trypsin-like serine proteases have flexible surface-exposed loops and are known to adopt higher and lower activity conformations, structural determinants for the different conformations have remained largely obscure. The trypsin-like serine protease, urokinase-type plasminogen acti...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tobias Kromann-Hansen, Eva Louise Lange, Hans Peter Sørensen, Gholamreza Hassanzadeh-Ghassabeh, Mingdong Huang, Jan K. Jensen, Serge Muyldermans, Paul J. Declerck, Elizabeth A. Komives, Peter A. Andreasen
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2017
Materias:
R
Q
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/409897e4334a4c2c81d516f9a73f9d64
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Abstract Although trypsin-like serine proteases have flexible surface-exposed loops and are known to adopt higher and lower activity conformations, structural determinants for the different conformations have remained largely obscure. The trypsin-like serine protease, urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA), is central in tissue remodeling processes and also strongly implicated in tumor metastasis. We solved five X-ray crystal structures of murine uPA (muPA) in the absence and presence of allosteric molecules and/or substrate-like molecules. The structure of unbound muPA revealed an unsuspected non-chymotrypsin-like protease conformation in which two β-strands in the core of the protease domain undergoes a major antiparallel-to-parallel conformational transition. We next isolated two anti-muPA nanobodies; an active-site binding nanobody and an allosteric nanobody. Crystal structures of the muPA:nanobody complexes and hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry revealed molecular insights about molecular factors controlling the antiparallel-to-parallel equilibrium in muPA. Together with muPA activity assays, the data provide valuable insights into regulatory mechanisms and conformational flexibility of uPA and trypsin-like serine proteases in general.