Zhang Yihong, Grimwood Amy L, Hancox Jules C, Harmer Stephen C, Dempsey Christopher E
School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, Biomedical Sciences Building, University Walk, Bristol, United Kingdom.
School of Biological Sciences, Life Sciences Building, Bristol, United Kingdom.
Front Pharmacol. 2022 Oct 20;13:1010119. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2022.1010119. eCollection 2022.
Loss of function (LOF) mutations of voltage sensitive K channel proteins hERG (Kv11.1) and KCNQ1 (Kv7.1) account for the majority of instances of congenital Long QT Syndrome (cLQTS) with the dominant molecular phenotype being a mistrafficking one resulting from protein misfolding. We explored the use of Evolutionary Coupling (EC) analysis, which identifies evolutionarily conserved pairwise amino acid interactions that may contribute to protein structural stability, to identify regions of the channels susceptible to misfolding mutations. Comparison with published experimental trafficking data for hERG and KCNQ1 showed that the method strongly predicts "scaffolding" regions of the channel membrane domains and has useful predictive power for trafficking phenotypes of individual variants. We identified a region in and around the cytoplasmic S2-S3 loop of the hERG Voltage Sensor Domain (VSD) as susceptible to destabilising mutation, and this was confirmed using a quantitative based trafficking assay that showed severely attenuated trafficking in eight out of 10 natural hERG VSD variants selected using EC analysis. Our analysis highlights an equivalence in the scaffolding structures of the hERG and KCNQ1 membrane domains. Pathogenic variants of ion channels with an underlying mistrafficking phenotype are likely to be located within similar scaffolding structures that are identifiable by EC analysis.
电压敏感钾通道蛋白hERG(Kv11.1)和KCNQ1(Kv7.1)的功能丧失(LOF)突变是先天性长QT综合征(cLQTS)的主要病因,其主要分子表型是由蛋白质错误折叠导致的错误转运。我们探索了使用进化偶联(EC)分析来识别通道中易受错误折叠突变影响的区域,该分析可识别可能有助于蛋白质结构稳定性的进化保守的成对氨基酸相互作用。与已发表的hERG和KCNQ1实验性转运数据的比较表明,该方法能强烈预测通道膜结构域的“支架”区域,并且对单个变体的转运表型具有有用的预测能力。我们确定hERG电压传感器结构域(VSD)的细胞质S2 - S3环及其周围区域易受不稳定突变影响,这通过基于定量的转运分析得到证实,该分析显示在使用EC分析选择的10个天然hERG VSD变体中,有8个的转运严重减弱。我们的分析突出了hERG和KCNQ1膜结构域支架结构的等效性。具有潜在错误转发表型的离子通道致病变体可能位于可通过EC分析识别的相似支架结构内。