期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：1994
卷号：91
期号：8
页码：3127-3131
DOI：10.1073/pnas.91.8.3127
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：The comparison of monomeric and dimeric diphtheria toxin (DT) reveals a mode for protein association which we call domain swapping. The structure of dimeric DT has been extensively refined against data to 2.0-A resolution and a three-residue loop has been corrected as compared with our published 2.5-A-resolution structure. The monomeric DT structure has also been determined, at 2.3-A resolution. Monomeric DT is a Y-shaped molecule with three domains: catalytic (C), transmembrane (T), and receptor binding (R). Upon freezing in phosphate buffer, DT forms a long-lived, metastable dimer. The protein chain tracing discloses that upon dimerization an unprecedented conformational rearrangement occurs: the entire R domain from each molecule of the dimer is exchanged for the R domain from the other. This involves breaking the noncovalent interactions between the R domain and the C and T domains, rotating the R domain by 180 degrees with atomic movements up to 65 A, and re-forming the same noncovalent interactions between the R domain and the C and T domains of the other chain of the dimer. This conformational transition explains the long life and metastability of the DT dimer. Several other intertwined, dimeric protein structures satisfy our definition of domain swapping and suggest that domain swapping may be the molecular mechanism for evolution of these oligomers and possibly of oligomeric proteins in general.
