Vikram Alva

The MPI bioinformatics Toolkit as an integrative platform for advanced protein sequence and structure analysis

The MPI Bioinformatics Toolkit (http://toolkit.tuebingen.mpg.de) is an open, interactive web service for comprehensive and collaborative protein bioinformatic analysis. It offers a wide array of interconnected, state-of-the-art bioinformatics tools to experts and non-experts alike, developed both externally (e.g. BLAST+, HMMER3, MUSCLE) and internally (e.g. HHpred, HHblits, PCOILS). While a beta version of the Toolkit was released 10 years ago, the current production-level release has been available since 2008 and has serviced more than 1.6 million external user queries. The usage of the Toolkit has continued to increase linearly over the years, reaching more than 400 000 queries in 2015. In fact, through the breadth of its tools and their tight interconnection, the Toolkit has become an excellent platform for experimental scientists as well as a useful resource for teaching bioinformatic inquiry to students in the life sciences. In this article, we report on the evolution of the Toolkit over the last ten years, focusing on the expansion of the tool repertoire (e.g. CS-BLAST, HHblits) and on infrastructural work needed to remain operative in a changing web environment.

Homology of SMP domains to the TULIP superfamily of lipid-binding proteins provides a structural basis for lipid exchange between ER and mitochondria

Mitochondria must uptake some phospholipids from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) for the biogenesis of their membranes. They convert one of these lipids, phosphatidylserine, to phosphatidylethanolamine, which can be re-exported via the ER to all other cellular membranes. The mechanisms underlying these exchanges between ER and mitochondria are poorly understood. Recently, a complex termed ER–mitochondria encounter structure (ERMES) was shown to be necessary for phospholipid exchange in budding yeast. However, it is unclear whether this complex is merely an inter-organelle tether or also the transporter. ERMES consists of four proteins: Mdm10, Mdm34 (Mmm2), Mdm12 and Mmm1, three of which contain the uncharacterized SMP domain common to a number of eukaryotic membrane-associated proteins. Here, we show that the SMP domain belongs to the TULIP superfamily of lipid/hydrophobic ligand-binding domains comprising members of known structure. This relationship suggests that the SMP domains of the ERMES complex mediate lipid exchange between ER and mitochondria. Contact: andrei.lupas@tuebingen.mpg.de Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Evolutionary relationships of microbial aromatic prenyltransferases.

The linkage of isoprenoid and aromatic moieties, catalyzed by aromatic prenyltransferases (PTases), leads to an impressive diversity of primary and secondary metabolites, including important pharmaceuticals and toxins. A few years ago, a hydroxynaphthalene PTase, NphB, featuring a novel ten-stranded β-barrel fold was identified in Streptomyces sp. strain CL190. This fold, termed the PT-barrel, is formed of five tandem ααββ structural repeats and remained exclusive to the NphB family until its recent discovery in the DMATS family of indole PTases. Members of these two families exist only in fungi and bacteria, and all of them appear to catalyze the prenylation of aromatic substrates involved in secondary metabolism. Sequence comparisons using PSI-BLAST do not yield matches between these two families, suggesting that they may have converged upon the same fold independently. However, we now provide evidence for a common ancestry for the NphB and DMATS families of PTases. We also identify sequence repeats that coincide with the structural repeats in proteins belonging to these two families. Therefore we propose that the PT-barrel arose by amplification of an ancestral ααββ module. In view of their homology and their similarities in structure and function, we propose to group the NphB and DMATS families together into a single superfamily, the PT-barrel superfamily.

A galaxy of folds.

Many protein classification systems capture homologous relationships by grouping domains into families and superfamilies on the basis of sequence similarity. Superfamilies with similar 3D structures are further grouped into folds. In the absence of discernable sequence similarity, these structural similarities were long thought to have originated independently, by convergent evolution. However, the growth of databases and advances in sequence comparison methods have led to the discovery of many distant evolutionary relationships that transcend the boundaries of superfamilies and folds. To investigate the contributions of convergent versus divergent evolution in the origin of protein folds, we clustered representative domains of known structure by their sequence similarity, treating them as point masses in a virtual 2D space which attract or repel each other depending on their pairwise sequence similarities. As expected, families in the same superfamily form tight clusters. But often, superfamilies of the same fold are linked with each other, suggesting that the entire fold evolved from an ancient prototype. Strikingly, some links connect superfamilies with different folds. They arise from modular peptide fragments of between 20 and 40 residues that co‐occur in the connected folds in disparate structural contexts. These may be descendants of an ancestral pool of peptide modules that evolved as cofactors in the RNA world and from which the first folded proteins arose by amplification and recombination. Our galaxy of folds summarizes, in a single image, most known and many yet undescribed homologous relationships between protein superfamilies, providing new insights into the evolution of protein domains.

Cradle-loop barrels and the concept of metafolds in protein classification by natural descent

Current classification systems for protein structure show many inconsistencies both within and between systems. The metafold concept was introduced to identify fold similarities by consensus and thus provide a more unified view of fold space. Using cradle-loop barrels as an example, we propose to use the metafold as the next hierarchical level above the fold, encompassing a group of topologically related folds for which a homologous relationship has been substantiated. We see this as an important step on the way to a classification of proteins by natural descent.

A Completely Reimplemented MPI Bioinformatics Toolkit with a New HHpred Server at its Core

The MPI Bioinformatics Toolkit (https://toolkit.tuebingen.mpg.de) is a free, one-stop web service for protein bioinformatic analysis. It currently offers 34 interconnected external and in-house tools, whose functionality covers sequence similarity searching, alignment construction, detection of sequence features, structure prediction, and sequence classification. This breadth has made the Toolkit an important resource for experimental biology and for teaching bioinformatic inquiry. Recently, we replaced the first version of the Toolkit, which was released in 2005 and had served around 2.5 million queries, with an entirely new version, focusing on improved features for the comprehensive analysis of proteins, as well as on promoting teaching. For instance, our popular remote homology detection server, HHpred, now allows pairwise comparison of two sequences or alignments and offers additional profile HMMs for several model organisms and domain databases. Here, we introduce the new version of our Toolkit and its application to the analysis of proteins.

A vocabulary of ancient peptides at the origin of folded proteins

The seemingly limitless diversity of proteins in nature arose from only a few thousand domain prototypes, but the origin of these themselves has remained unclear. We are pursuing the hypothesis that they arose by fusion and accretion from an ancestral set of peptides active as co-factors in RNA-dependent replication and catalysis. Should this be true, contemporary domains may still contain vestiges of such peptides, which could be reconstructed by a comparative approach in the same way in which ancient vocabularies have been reconstructed by the comparative study of modern languages. To test this, we compared domains representative of known folds and identified 40 fragments whose similarity is indicative of common descent, yet which occur in domains currently not thought to be homologous. These fragments are widespread in the most ancient folds and enriched for iron-sulfur- and nucleic acid-binding. We propose that they represent the observable remnants of a primordial RNA-peptide world. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09410.001

From cyanobacteria to plants: conservation of PII functions during plastid evolution

This article reviews the current state-of-the-art concerning the functions of the signal processing protein PII in cyanobacteria and plants, with a special focus on evolutionary aspects. We start out with a general introduction to PII proteins, their distribution, and their evolution. We also discuss PII-like proteins and domains, in particular, the similarity between ATP-phosphoribosyltransferase (ATP-PRT) and its PII-like domain and the complex between N-acetyl-l-glutamate kinase (NAGK) and its PII activator protein from oxygenic phototrophs. The structural basis of the function of PII as an ATP/ADP/2-oxoglutarate signal processor is described for Synechococcus elongatus PII. In both cyanobacteria and plants, a major target of PII regulation is NAGK, which catalyzes the committed step of arginine biosynthesis. The common principles of NAGK regulation by PII are outlined. Based on the observation that PII proteins from cyanobacteria and plants can functionally replace each other, the hypothesis that PII-dependent NAGK control was under selective pressure during the evolution of plastids of Chloroplastida and Rhodophyta is tested by bioinformatics approaches. It is noteworthy that two lineages of heterokont algae, diatoms and brown algae, also possess NAGK, albeit lacking PII; their NAGK however appears to have descended from an alphaproteobacterium and not from a cyanobacterium as in plants. We end this article by coming to the conclusion that during the evolution of plastids, PII lost its function in coordinating gene expression through the PipX-NtcA network but preserved its role in nitrogen (arginine) storage metabolism, and subsequently took over the fine-tuned regulation of carbon (fatty acid) storage metabolism, which is important in certain developmental stages of plants.

Bioinformatics of the TULIP domain superfamily.

Proteins of the BPI (bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein)-like family contain either one or two tandem copies of a fold that usually provides a tubular cavity for the binding of lipids. Bioinformatic analyses show that, in addition to its known members, which include BPI, LBP [LPS (lipopolysaccharide)-binding protein)], CETP (cholesteryl ester-transfer protein), PLTP (phospholipid-transfer protein) and PLUNC (palate, lung and nasal epithelium clone) protein, this family also includes other, more divergent groups containing hypothetical proteins from fungi, nematodes and deep-branching unicellular eukaryotes. More distantly, BPI-like proteins are related to a family of arthropod proteins that includes hormone-binding proteins (Takeout-like; previously described to adopt a BPI-like fold), allergens and several groups of uncharacterized proteins. At even greater evolutionary distance, BPI-like proteins are homologous with the SMP (synaptotagmin-like, mitochondrial and lipid-binding protein) domains, which are found in proteins associated with eukaryotic membrane processes. In particular, SMP domain-containing proteins of yeast form the ERMES [ER (endoplasmic reticulum)-mitochondria encounter structure], required for efficient phospholipid exchange between these organelles. This suggests that SMP domains themselves bind lipids and mediate their exchange between heterologous membranes. The most distant group of homologues we detected consists of uncharacterized animal proteins annotated as TM (transmembrane) 24. We propose to group these families together into one superfamily that we term as the TULIP (tubular lipid-binding) domain superfamily.

The TULIP superfamily of eukaryotic lipid-binding proteins as a mediator of lipid sensing and transport.

The tubular lipid-binding (TULIP) superfamily has emerged in recent years as a major mediator of lipid sensing and transport in eukaryotes. It currently encompasses three protein families, SMP-like, BPI-like, and Takeout-like, which share a common fold. This fold consists of a long helix wrapped in a highly curved anti-parallel β-sheet, enclosing a central, lipophilic cavity. The SMP-like proteins, which include subunits of the ERMES complex and the extended synaptotagmins (E-Syts), appear to be mainly located at membrane contacts sites (MCSs) between organelles, mediating inter-organelle lipid exchange. The BPI-like proteins, which include the bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI), the LPS (lipopolysaccharide)-binding protein (LBP), the cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP), and the phospholipid transfer protein (PLTP), are either involved in innate immunity against bacteria through their ability to sense lipopolysaccharides, as is the case for BPI and LBP, or in lipid exchange between lipoprotein particles, as is the case for CETP and PLTP. The Takeout-like proteins, which are comprised of insect juvenile hormone-binding proteins and arthropod allergens, transport, where known, lipid hormones to target tissues during insect development. In all cases, the activity of these proteins is underpinned by their ability to bind large, hydrophobic ligands in their central cavity and segregate them away from the aqueous environment. Furthermore, where they are involved in lipid exchange, recent structural studies have highlighted their ability to establish lipophilic, tubular channels, either between organelles in the case of SMP domains or between lipoprotein particles in the case of CETP. Here, we review the current knowledge on the structure, versatile functions, and evolution of the TULIP superfamily. We propose a deep evolutionary split in this superfamily, predating the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor, between the SMP-like proteins, which act on lipids endogenous to the cell, and the BPI-like proteins (including the Takeout-like proteins of arthropods), which act on exogenous lipids. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: The cellular lipid landscape edited by Tim P. Levine and Anant K. Menon.