Routine phasing of coiled-coil protein crystal structures withAMPLE

Abstract

Coiled-coil protein folds are among the most abundant in nature. These folds consist of long wound α-helices and are architecturally simple, but paradoxically their crystallographic structures are notoriously difficult to solve with molecular-replacement techniques. The programAMPLEcan solve crystal structures by molecular replacement usingab initiosearch models in the absence of an existent homologous protein structure.AMPLEhas been benchmarked on a large and diverse test set of coiled-coil crystal structures and has been found to solve 80% of all cases. Successes included structures with chain lengths of up to 253 residues and resolutions down to 2.9 Å, considerably extending the limits on size and resolution that are typically tractable byab initiomethodologies. The structures of two macromolecular complexes, one including DNA, were also successfully solved using their coiled-coil components. It is demonstrated that both theab initiomodelling and the use of ensemble search models contribute to the success ofAMPLEby comparison with phasing attempts using single structures or ideal polyalanine helices. These successes suggest that molecular replacement withAMPLEshould be the method of choice for the crystallographic elucidation of a coiled-coil structure. Furthermore,AMPLEmay be able to exploit the presence of a coiled coil in a complex to provide a convenient route for phasing.