Robert J. Weatheritt

Classification of Intrinsically Disordered Regions and Proteins.

1.1. Uncharacterized Protein Segments Are a Source of Functional Novelty Over the past decade, we have observed a massive increase in the amount of information describing protein sequences from a variety of organisms.1,2 While this may reflect the diversity in sequence space, and possibly also in function space,3 a large proportion of the sequences lacks any useful function annotation.4,5 Often these sequences are annotated as putative or hypothetical proteins, and for the majority their functions still remain unknown.6,7 Suggestions about potential protein function, primarily molecular function, often come from computational analysis of their sequences. For instance, homology detection allows for the transfer of information from well-characterized protein segments to those with similar sequences that lack annotation of molecular function.8−10 Other aspects of function, such as the biological processes proteins participate in, may come from genetic- and disease-association studies, expression and interaction network data, and comparative genomics approaches that investigate genomic context.11−17 Characterization of unannotated and uncharacterized protein segments is expected to lead to the discovery of novel functions as well as provide important insights into existing biological processes. In addition, it is likely to shed new light on molecular mechanisms of diseases that are not yet fully understood. Thus, uncharacterized protein segments are likely to be a large source of functional novelty relevant for discovering new biology.

ELM—the database of eukaryotic linear motifs

Linear motifs are short, evolutionarily plastic components of regulatory proteins and provide low-affinity interaction interfaces. These compact modules play central roles in mediating every aspect of the regulatory functionality of the cell. They are particularly prominent in mediating cell signaling, controlling protein turnover and directing protein localization. Given their importance, our understanding of motifs is surprisingly limited, largely as a result of the difficulty of discovery, both experimentally and computationally. The Eukaryotic Linear Motif (ELM) resource at http://elm.eu.org provides the biological community with a comprehensive database of known experimentally validated motifs, and an exploratory tool to discover putative linear motifs in user-submitted protein sequences. The current update of the ELM database comprises 1800 annotated motif instances representing 170 distinct functional classes, including approximately 500 novel instances and 24 novel classes. Several older motif class entries have been also revisited, improving annotation and adding novel instances. Furthermore, addition of full-text search capabilities, an enhanced interface and simplified batch download has improved the overall accessibility of the ELM data. The motif discovery portion of the ELM resource has added conservation, and structural attributes have been incorporated to aid users to discriminate biologically relevant motifs from stochastically occurring non-functional instances.

The eukaryotic linear motif resource ELM: 10 years and counting

The eukaryotic linear motif (ELM http://elm.eu.org) resource is a hub for collecting, classifying and curating information about short linear motifs (SLiMs). For >10 years, this resource has provided the scientific community with a freely accessible guide to the biology and function of linear motifs. The current version of ELM contains ∼200 different motif classes with over 2400 experimentally validated instances manually curated from >2000 scientific publications. Furthermore, detailed information about motif-mediated interactions has been annotated and made available in standard exchange formats. Where appropriate, links are provided to resources such as switches.elm.eu.org and KEGG pathways.

ELM: the status of the 2010 eukaryotic linear motif resource.

Linear motifs are short segments of multidomain proteins that provide regulatory functions independently of protein tertiary structure. Much of intracellular signalling passes through protein modifications at linear motifs. Many thousands of linear motif instances, most notably phosphorylation sites, have now been reported. Although clearly very abundant, linear motifs are difficult to predict de novo in protein sequences due to the difficulty of obtaining robust statistical assessments. The ELM resource at http://elm.eu.org/ provides an expanding knowledge base, currently covering 146 known motifs, with annotation that includes >1300 experimentally reported instances. ELM is also an exploratory tool for suggesting new candidates of known linear motifs in proteins of interest. Information about protein domains, protein structure and native disorder, cellular and taxonomic contexts is used to reduce or deprecate false positive matches. Results are graphically displayed in a ‘Bar Code’ format, which also displays known instances from homologous proteins through a novel ‘Instance Mapper’ protocol based on PHI-BLAST. ELM server output provides links to the ELM annotation as well as to a number of remote resources. Using the links, researchers can explore the motifs, proteins, complex structures and associated literature to evaluate whether candidate motifs might be worth experimental investigation.

Short Linear Motifs: Ubiquitous and Functionally Diverse Protein Interaction Modules Directing Cell Regulation

Interaction Modules Directing Cell Regulation Kim Van Roey,† Bora Uyar,† Robert J. Weatheritt,‡ Holger Dinkel,† Markus Seiler,† Aidan Budd,† Toby J. Gibson,† and Norman E. Davey*,†,§ †Structural and Computational Biology Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany ‡MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), Francis Crick Avenue, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge CB2 0QH, United Kingdom Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143, United States

Controlling entropy to tune the functions of intrinsically disordered regions

Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are fundamental units of protein function and regulation. Despite their inability to form a unique stable tertiary structure in isolation, many IDRs adopt a defined conformation upon binding and achieve their function through their interactions with other biomolecules. However, this requirement for IDR functionality seems to be at odds with the high entropic cost they must incur upon binding an interaction partner. How is this seeming paradox resolved? While increasing the enthalpy of binding is one approach to compensate for this entropic cost, growing evidence suggests that inherent features of IDRs, for instance repeating linear motifs, minimise the entropic cost of binding. Moreover, this control of entropic cost can be carefully modulated by a range of regulatory mechanisms, such as alternative splicing and post-translational modifications, which enable allosteric communication and rheostat-like tuning of IDR function. In that sense, the high entropic cost of IDR binding can be advantageous by providing tunability to protein function. In addition to biological regulatory mechanisms, modulation of entropy can also be controlled by environmental factors, such as changes in temperature, redox-potential and pH. These principles are extensively exploited by a number of organisms, including pathogens. They can also be utilised in bioengineering, synthetic biology and in pharmaceutical applications such as increasing bioavailability of protein therapeutics.

Linear motifs confer functional diversity onto splice variants.

The pre-translational modification of messenger ribonucleic acids (mRNAs) by alternative promoter usage and alternative splicing is an important source of pleiotropy. Despite intensive efforts, our understanding of the functional implications of this dynamically created diversity is still incomplete. Using the available knowledge of interaction modules, particularly within intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), we analysed the occurrences of protein modules within alternative exons. We find that regions removed or included by pre-translational variation are enriched in linear motifs suggesting that the removal or inclusion of exons containing these interaction modules is an important regulatory mechanism. In particular, we observe that PDZ-, PTB-, SH2- and WW-domain binding motifs are more likely to occur within alternative exons. We also determine that regions removed or included by alternative promoter usage are enriched in IDRs suggesting that protein isoform diversity is tightly coupled to the modulation of IDRs. This study, therefore, demonstrates that short linear motifs are key components for establishing protein diversity between splice variants.

Linear motifs: lost in (pre)translation.

Pretranslational modification by alternative splicing, alternative promoter usage and RNA editing enables the production of multiple protein isoforms from a single gene. A large quantity of data now supports the notion that short linear motifs (SLiMs), which are protein interaction modules enriched within intrinsically disordered regions, are key for the functional diversification of these isoforms. The inclusion or removal of these SLiMs can switch the subcellular localisation of an isoform, promote cooperative associations, refine the affinity of an interaction, coordinate phase transitions within the cell, and even create isoforms of opposing function. This article discusses the novel functionality enabled by the addition or removal of SLiM-containing exons by pretranslational modifications, such as alternative splicing and alternative promoter usage, and how these alterations enable the creation and modulation of complex regulatory and signalling pathways.

Drift and conservation of differential exon usage across tissues in primate species

Significance In higher organisms, most genes consist of several disconnected regions (exons), which are combined in various ways to produce several different gene transcripts from the same gene. Such alternative exon usage is thought to contribute to the ability of organisms to generate different cell types and tissues from a single genome. However, recent evidence has also suggested that much alternative exon usage might be noise with no particular function. We reconcile these two views by comparing how exons are used in different tissues and for which exons these usage patterns across tissues change or stay similar (are “conserved”) in several primate species. The latter case is an indication that the pattern is of functional importance, and our analysis quantifies how widespread such cases are. Alternative usage of exons provides genomes with plasticity to produce different transcripts from the same gene, modulating the function, localization, and life cycle of gene products. It affects most human genes. For a limited number of cases, alternative functions and tissue-specific roles are known. However, recent high-throughput sequencing studies have suggested that much alternative isoform usage across tissues is nonconserved, raising the question of the extent of its functional importance. We address this question in a genome-wide manner by analyzing the transcriptomes of five tissues for six primate species, focusing on exons that are 1:1 orthologous in all six species. Our results support a model in which differential usage of exons has two major modes: First, most of the exons show only weak differences, which are dominated by interspecies variability and may reflect neutral drift and noisy splicing. These cases dominate the genome-wide view and explain why conservation appears to be so limited. Second, however, a sizeable minority of exons show strong differences between tissues, which are mostly conserved. We identified a core set of 3,800 exons from 1,643 genes that show conservation of strongly tissue-dependent usage patterns from human at least to macaque. This set is enriched for exons encoding protein-disordered regions and untranslated regions. Our findings support the theory that isoform regulation is an important target of evolution in primates, and our method provides a powerful tool for discovering potentially functional tissue-dependent isoforms.

The identification of short linear motif-mediated interfaces within the human interactome

Motivation: Eukaryotic proteins are highly modular, containing multiple interaction interfaces that mediate binding to a network of regulators and effectors. Recent advances in high-throughput proteomics have rapidly expanded the number of known protein–protein interactions (PPIs); however, the molecular basis for the majority of these interactions remains to be elucidated. There has been a growing appreciation of the importance of a subset of these PPIs, namely those mediated by short linear motifs (SLiMs), particularly the canonical and ubiquitous SH2, SH3 and PDZ domain-binding motifs. However, these motif classes represent only a small fraction of known SLiMs and outside these examples little effort has been made, either bioinformatically or experimentally, to discover the full complement of motif instances. Results: In this article, interaction data are analysed to identify and characterize an important subset of PPIs, those involving SLiMs binding to globular domains. To do this, we introduce iELM, a method to identify interactions mediated by SLiMs and add molecular details of the interaction interfaces to both interacting proteins. The method identifies SLiM-mediated interfaces from PPI data by searching for known SLiM–domain pairs. This approach was applied to the human interactome to identify a set of high-confidence putative SLiM-mediated PPIs. Availability: iELM is freely available at http://elmint.embl.de Contact: toby.gibson@embl.de Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.