Structure-based assignment of the biochemical function of a hypothetical protein: A test case of structural genomics

Thomas I. Zarembinski, L. I.Wei Hung, Hans Joachim Mueller-Dieckmann, Kyeong Kyu Kim, Misao Yokota, Rosalind Kim, Sung Hou Kim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

288 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many small bacterial, archaebacterial, and eukaryotic genomes have been sequenced, and the larger eukaryotic genomes are predicted to be completely sequenced within the next decade. In all genomes sequenced to date, a large portion of these organisms, predicted protein coding regions encode polypeptides of unknown biochemical, biophysical, and/or cellular functions. Three-dimensional structures of these proteins may suggest biochemical or biophysical functions. Here we report the crystal structure of one such protein, MJ0577, from a hyperthermophile, Methanococcus jannaschii, at 1.7- Å resolution. The structure contains a bound ATP, suggesting MJ0577 is an ATPase or an ATP-mediated molecular switch, which we confirm by biochemical experiments. Furthermore, the structure reveals different ATP binding motifs that are shared among many homologous hypothetical proteins in this family. This result indicates that structure-based assignment of molecular function is a viable approach for the large-scale biochemical assignment of proteins and for discovering new motifs, a basic premise of structural genomics.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)15189-15193
Number of pages5
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume95
Issue number26
DOIs
StatePublished - 22 Dec 1998
Externally publishedYes

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