Zheng Chao-De

A flexible and efficient procedure for the solution and phase refinement of protein structures

An ab initio method is described for solving protein structures for which atomic resolution (better than 1.2 A) data are available. The problem is divided into two stages. Firstly, a substructure composed of a small percentage ( approximately 5%) of the scattering matter of the unit cell is positioned. This is used to generate a starting set of phases that are slightly better than random. Secondly, the full structure is developed from this phase set. The substructure can be a constellation of atoms that scatter anomalously, such as metal or S atoms. Alternatively, a structural fragment such as an idealized alpha-helix or a motif from some distantly related protein can be orientated and sometimes positioned by an extensive molecular-replacement search, checking the correlation coefficient between observed and calculated structure factors for the highest normalized structure-factor amplitudes |E|. The top solutions are further ranked on the correlation coefficient for all E values. The phases generated from such fragments are improved using Patterson superposition maps and Sayre-equation refinement carried out with fast Fourier transforms. Phase refinement is completed using a novel density-modification process referred to as dynamic density modification (DDM). The method is illustrated by the solution of a number of known proteins. It has proved fast and very effective, able in these tests to solve proteins of up to 5000 atoms. The resulting electron-density maps show the major part of the structures at atomic resolution and can readily be interpreted by automated procedures.

SAD phasing by OASIS at different resolutions down to 0.30 nm and below

Single-wavelength anomalous diffraction (SAD) phasing is increasingly important in solving de novo protein structures. Direct methods have been proved very efficient in SAD phasing. This paper aims at probing the low-resolution limit of direct-method SAD phasing. Two known proteins TT0570 and Tom70p were used as test samples. Sulfur-SAD data of the protein TT0570 were collected with conventional Cu-Kα source at 0.18 nm resolution. Its truncated subsets respectively at 0.21, 0.30, 0.35 and 0.40 nm resolutions were used in the test. TT0570 Cu-Kα sulfur-SAD data have an expected Bijvoet ratio / ~ 0.55%. In the 0.21 nm case, a single run of OASIS-DM-ARP/wARP led automatically to a model containing 1178 of the total 1206 residues all docked into the sequence. In 0.30 and 0.35 nm cases, SAD phasing by OASIS-DM led to traceable electron density maps. In the 0.40 nm case, SAD phasing by OASIS-DM resulted in a degraded electron density map, which may be difficult to trace but still contains useful secondary-structure information. Test on real 0.33 nm selenium-SAD data of the protein Tom70p showed that even automatic model building was not successful, the combination of manual tracing and direct-method fragment extension was capable of significantly improving the electron-density map. This provides the possibility of effectively improving the manually built model before structure refinement is performed.

Combining SAD/SIR iteration and MR iteration in partial-model extension of proteins

There are two kinds of dual-space partial-model extensions which involve the direct-method program OASIS. The first kind, named SAD/SIR iteration, uses SAD/SIR information, while the second kind, named molecular replacement (MR) iteration, does not use that information. In general, the SAD/SIR iteration is more powerful since more experimental information is used. However, in most cases when protein structures are solved with the molecular replacement method, SAD/SIR information is not available. Thus the MR iteration is particularly useful for the completion of models from molecular replacement. The SAD/SIR iteration will be automatically used in OASIS for data sets containing SAD/SIR signals, while the MR iteration will be dedicated to data sets without SAD/SIR signals. The present paper shows that for data containing SAD/SIR signals, a combination of SAD/SIR iteration and MR iteration could lead to significantly better results than that obtained from the SAD/SIR iteration alone.

Is single-wavelength anomalous scattering sufficient for solving phases? A comparison of different methods for a 2.1 Å structure solution

The structure of rusticyanin is the largest unknown structure (M(r) = 16.8 kDa) which has been recently solved by the direct-methods approach using only single-wavelength anomalous scattering (SAS) data from the native protein [Harvey et al. (1998). Acta Cryst. D54, 629-635]. Here, the results of the Sim distribution approach [Hendrickson & Teeter (1981). Nature (London), 290, 107-113] and of the CCP4 procedure MLPHARE [Collaborative Computational Project, Number 4 (1994). Acta Cryst. D50, 760-763] are compared with those from direct methods. Analysis against the final refined model shows that direct methods produced significantly better phases (average phase error 56 degrees ) and therefore significantly better electron-density maps than the Sim distribution and MLPHARE approaches (average phase error was around 63 degrees in both cases).

OASIS4.0-a new version of the program OASIS for phasing protein diffraction data

The program OASIS4.0 has been released. Apart from the improved single-wavelength anomalous diffraction (SAD) phasing algorithm described in a separate paper, an important new feature in this version is the automation of the iterative phasing and model-building process in solving protein structures. A new graphical users interface (GUI) is provided for controlling and real-time monitoring the dual-space iterative process. The GUI is discussed in detail in the present paper.

SIR phasing by combination of SOLVE/RESOLVE and dual-space fragment extension involving OASIS

A new phasing procedure has been proposed for dealing with single isomorphous replacement (SIR) x-ray diffraction data. The procedure combines SOLVE/RESOLVE with the dual-space fragment extension involving OASIS. Two sets of SIR data at 0.28 nm resolution taken from the protein (R)-phycoerythrin (PDB code: 1LIA) were used in the test. For one of the two SIR data sets, a default run of SOLVE/RESOLVE based on the heavy-atom substructure found by SHLEXD led automatically to an interpretable electron density map. OASIS could not effectively improve the result. For the other set of SIR data, SOLVE/RESOLVE resulted in a fragmented model consisting of 454 of the total 668 residues, in which only 29 residues were docked into the sequence. Based on this model, 7 iteration cycles of OASIS-DM-RESOLVE (build only) yielded automatically a model of 547 residues with 133 residues docked into the sequence. The overall-averaged phase error decreased considerably and the quality of electron density map was improved significantly. Two more cycles of iterative OASIS-DM-RESOLVE were carried out, in which the output phases and figures of merit from DM were merged with that from the original run of SOLVE/RESOLVE before they were passed onto RESOLVE (build only). This led automatically to a model containing 452 residues with 173 docked into the sequence. The resultant electron density map is manually traceable. It is concluded that when results of SOLVE/RESOLVE are not sufficiently satisfactory, the combination of SOLVE/RESOLVE and OASIS-DM-RESOLVE (build only) may significantly improve them.

Ab-initio determination of the incommensurate modulated structure of Bi-2212 from x-ray powder diffraction data—a simulation

A set of x-ray powder diffraction data of the high-Tc superconductor Bi2Sr2Ca1Cu2Oy (Bi-2212) was simulated based on the experimental single-crystal diffraction data by merging together reflections with diffraction angles (2θ) closer to each other than 0.04 degrees. There are three types of overlapping in the powder diffraction data, i.e. (i) overlapping of main reflections; (ii) overlapping of satellite reflections and (iii) overlapping of main and satellite reflections. The third type of overlapping was first separated into main and satellite components according to the ratio between the average intensity of that of types (i) and (ii). Then the overlapped reflections of main reflections and those of the satellites were uniformly partitioned. Heavy-atom sites in the basic/average structure were found using the uniformly decomposed main reflections by the conventional direct method. Phases of the satellites were derived by the multidimensional direct method. The resultant four-dimensional Fourier maps revealed correctly the essential feature of the modulation. No assumption on either the basic structure or the modulation is needed.

Phasing of lysozyme using one-wavelength anomalous scattering of sulphur atoms through the combination of direct methods and density modification

A new method of combining one-wavelength anomalous scattering (OAS) phasing and density modification has been described, in which the improved phases from density modification are re-introduced into OAS phasing. In this way, the phases could be improved iteratively until convergence. The OAS phasing method is based on the previously established sign-probability formula, which breaks the phase ambiguity in the OAS phasing. The implementation of this method has been available in CCP4 as OASIS. This method, although based on direct-methods, could also incorporate known phases and figures of merit into its sign-probability formula. In the implementation of OASIS, the known phases are from the positions of the anomalous scatters. In the current method, the known phases are from the density modification. The current method was tested on phasing a lysozyme crystal using anomalous scattering of sulphur atoms with diffraction data collected on an in-house x-ray source. The resulting map was well connected for the backbone atoms and clearly traceable, with an average map correlation coefficient of 0.6622 for the backbone atoms.