Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 59717, United States.
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, United States.
ACS Chem Biol. 2020 Aug 21;15(8):2273-2280. doi: 10.1021/acschembio.0c00481. Epub 2020 Jul 28.
While there is an effective vaccine for Human Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), 257 million people have chronic infections for which there is no cure. The assembly process for the viral capsid is a potential therapeutic target. In order to understand the capsid assembly process, we investigated the dimeric building blocks of the capsid. To understand what blocks assembly, we took advantage of an assembly incompetent mutant dimer, Cp149-Y132A, located in the interdimer interface. This mutation leads to changes in protein dynamics throughout the structure of the dimer as measured by hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS). To further understand how the HBV capsid assembles, the homologue woodchuck HBV (WHV) capsid protein dimer (Cp) was used. WHV is more stable than HBV in HDX-MS and native mass spectrometry experiments. Because the WHV Cp assembles more rapidly into viral capsids than HBV, it was suspected that an increase in stability of the intradimer interface and/or in the contact region leads to increased assembly rates. The differences in dynamics when comparing HBV and human Cp149-Y132A as well as the differences in dynamics when comparing the HBV and WHV Cps allowed us to map an allosteric network within the HBV dimer. Through a careful comparison of structure, stability, and dynamics using four different capsid protein dimers, we conclude that protein subunit dynamics regulate HBV capsid assembly.
尽管有针对人类乙型肝炎病毒 (HBV) 的有效疫苗,但仍有 2.57 亿人患有慢性感染,目前尚无治愈方法。病毒衣壳的组装过程是一个潜在的治疗靶点。为了了解衣壳组装过程,我们研究了衣壳的二聚体构建块。为了了解什么会阻止组装,我们利用了位于二聚体界面中的组装能力不足的突变体二聚体 Cp149-Y132A。这种突变导致整个二聚体结构中蛋白质动力学发生变化,这可以通过氢氘交换质谱(HDX-MS)来衡量。为了进一步了解乙型肝炎病毒衣壳如何组装,使用了同源的土拨鼠乙型肝炎病毒 (WHV) 衣壳蛋白二聚体 (Cp)。与 HDX-MS 和天然质谱实验相比,WHV 比 HBV 更稳定。由于 WHV Cp 比 HBV 更快地组装成病毒衣壳,因此怀疑二聚体界面和/或接触区域的稳定性增加会导致组装速率增加。比较 HBV 和人 Cp149-Y132A 时的动力学差异以及比较 HBV 和 WHV Cps 时的动力学差异,使我们能够在 HBV 二聚体中绘制出变构网络。通过使用四个不同的衣壳蛋白二聚体仔细比较结构、稳定性和动力学,我们得出结论,蛋白质亚基动力学调节 HBV 衣壳组装。