Evolutionary optimization of peptide substrates for proteases that exhibit rapid hydrolysis kinetics.

Protease cleavage site recognition motifs can be identified using protease substrate discovery methodologies, but typically exhibit non-optimal specificity and activity. To enable evolutionary optimization of substrate cleavage kinetics, a two-color cellular library of peptide substrates (CLiPS) methodology was developed. Two-color CLiPS was applied to identify peptide substrates for the tobacco etch virus (TEV) protease from a random pentapeptide library, which were then optimized by screening of a focused, extended substrate library.

SCHEMA recombination of a fungal cellulase uncovers a single mutation that contributes markedly to stability.

A quantitative linear model accurately (R(2) = 0.88) describes the thermostabilities of 54 characterized members of a family of fungal cellobiohydrolase class II (CBH II) cellulase chimeras made by SCHEMA recombination of three fungal enzymes, demonstrating that the contributions of SCHEMA sequence blocks to stability are predominantly additive. Thirty-one of 31 predicted thermostable CBH II chimeras have thermal inactivation temperatures higher than the most thermostable parent CBH II, from Humicola insolens, and the model predicts that hundreds more CBH II chimeras share this superior thermostability.

Structural and functional characterization of SplA, an exclusively specific protease of Staphylococcus aureus.

Staphylococcus aureus is a dangerous human pathogen whose antibiotic resistance is steadily increasing and no efficient vaccine is as yet available. This serious threat drives extensive studies on staphylococcal physiology and pathogenicity pathways, especially virulence factors. Spl (serine protease-like) proteins encoded by an operon containing up to six genes are a good example of poorly characterized secreted proteins probably involved in virulence.

Enzymatic activity of the Staphylococcus aureus SplB serine protease is induced by substrates containing the sequence Trp-Glu-Leu-Gln.

Proteases are of significant importance for the virulence of Staphylococcus aureus. Nevertheless, their subset, the serine protease-like proteins, remains poorly characterized. Here presented is an investigation of SplB protease catalytic activity revealing that the enzyme possesses exquisite specificity and only cleaves efficiently after the sequence Trp-Glu-Leu-Gln.

Protease specificity determination by using cellular libraries of peptide substrates (CLiPS).

We report a general combinatorial approach to identify optimal substrates of a given protease by using quantitative kinetic screening of cellular libraries of peptide substrates (CLiPS). A whole-cell protease activity assay was developed by displaying fluorescent reporter substrates on the surface of Escherichia coli as N-terminal fusions. This approach enabled generation of substrate libraries of arbitrary amino acid composition and length that are self-renewing.

Bacterial display using circularly permuted outer membrane protein OmpX yields high affinity peptide ligands.

A bacterial display methodology was developed for N- and C-terminal display and demonstrated to enable rapid screening of very large peptide libraries with high precision and efficiency. To overcome limitations of insertional fusion display libraries, a new scaffold was developed through circular permutation of the Escherichia coli outer membrane protein OmpX that presents both N and C termini on the external cell surface. Circularly permuted OmpX (CPX) display was directly compared to insertional fusion display by screening comparable peptide libraries in each format using magnetic and fluorescence activated cell sorting.