Department of Bioorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology , Wyb. Wyspianskiego 27, 50-370 Wroclaw, Poland.
NCI-designated Cancer Center, Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute , La Jolla, California 92037, United States.
J Am Chem Soc. 2017 Jul 26;139(29):10115-10125. doi: 10.1021/jacs.7b04394. Epub 2017 Jul 18.
Neutrophils, the front line defenders against infection, express four serine proteases (NSPs) that play roles in the control of cell-signaling pathways and defense against pathogens and whose imbalance leads to pathological conditions. Dissecting the roles of individual NSPs in humans is problematic because neutrophils are end-stage cells with a short half-life and minimal ongoing protein synthesis. To gain insight into the regulation of NSP activity we have generated a small-molecule chemical toolbox consisting of activity-based probes with different fluorophore-detecting groups with minimal wavelength overlap and highly selective natural and unnatural amino acid recognition sequences. The key feature of these activity-based probes is the ability to use them for simultaneous observation and detection of all four individual NSPs by fluorescence microscopy, a feature never achieved in previous studies. Using these probes we demonstrate uneven distribution of NSPs in neutrophil azurophil granules, such that they seem to be mutually excluded from each other, suggesting the existence of unknown granule-targeting mechanisms.
中性粒细胞是抵御感染的第一道防线,它们表达四种丝氨酸蛋白酶(NSPs),这些蛋白酶在细胞信号通路的控制和病原体防御中发挥作用,其失衡会导致病理状况。由于中性粒细胞是终末细胞,半衰期短,持续蛋白质合成极少,因此解析单个 NSP 的作用存在问题。为了深入了解 NSP 活性的调节,我们生成了一个小分子化学工具包,其中包含具有不同荧光团检测基团的基于活性的探针,这些基团具有最小的波长重叠和高度选择性的天然和非天然氨基酸识别序列。这些基于活性的探针的关键特征是能够使用它们通过荧光显微镜同时观察和检测所有四种单个 NSP,这是以前的研究从未实现的功能。使用这些探针,我们证明了 NSP 在中性粒细胞嗜天青颗粒中的不均匀分布,使得它们似乎彼此相互排斥,这表明存在未知的颗粒靶向机制。