MBE Advance Access originally published online on November 7, 2006
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2007 24(2):382-387; doi:10.1093/molbev/msl168
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Research Articles |
HIV-1 Protease Catalytic Efficiency Effects Caused by Random Single Amino Acid Substitutions
Fundació irsiCaixa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
E-mail: mmartinez{at}irsicaixa.es.
| Abstract |
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Protein evolution has occurred by successive fixation of individual mutations. The probability of fixation depends on the fitness of the mutation, and the arising variant can be deleterious, neutral, or beneficial. Despite its relevance, only few studies have estimated the distribution of fitness effects caused by random single mutations on protein function. The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) protease was chosen as a model protein to quantify protein's tolerability to random single mutations. After determining the enzymatic activity of 107 single random mutants, we found that 86% of single mutations were deleterious for the enzyme catalytic efficiency and 54% lethal. Only 2% of the mutations significantly increased the catalytic efficiency of the enzyme. These data demonstrate the vulnerability of HIV-1 protease to single random mutations. When a second random mutagenesis library was constructed from an HIV-1 protease carrying a highly deleterious single mutation (D30N), a higher proportion of mutations with neutral or beneficial effect were found, 26% and 9%, respectively. Importantly, antagonist epistasis was observed between deleterious mutations. In particular, the mutation N88D, lethal for the wild-type protease, restored the wild-type catalytic efficiency when combined with the highly deleterious mutation D30N. The low tolerability to single random substitutions shown here for the wild-type HIV-1 protease contrasts with its in vivo ability to generate an adaptive variation. Thus, the antagonist epistasis between deleterious or lethal mutations may be responsible for increasing the protein mutational robustness and evolvability.
Key Words: protein evolution robustness epistasis
| Introduction |
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Robustness defined as a protein's tolerance to substitutions is of fundamental importance to understand natural or artificial protein evolution. Recently, it has been shown that mutational robustness can enhance proteins' capacity to evolve (Aharoni et al. 2005
Proteins are to a certain extent tolerant to single mutations. Examples are bacteriophage T4 lysozyme and Escherichia coli lac repressor in which 84% and 65%, respectively, of single mutants were functional (Rennell et al. 1991
; Markiewicz et al. 1994
). We and others have also demonstrated the protein robustness to multiple substitutions (Martinez et al. 1996
; Guo et al. 2004
; Bloom et al. 2005
). Although the former studies have provided important information about protein tolerance to amino acid changes, they may not reflect the protein tolerance to single substitutions because when several mutations are present simultaneously in the same genotype, they interact to determine the overall fitness, a phenomenon also termed epistasis (Phillips et al. 2000
). Because the evolution of natural proteins is thought to have occurred by successive fixation of individual mutations (Smith 1970
), it may be relevant to explore protein tolerance to single substitutions in order to understand the evolution of natural proteins.
To characterize protein tolerance to single random substitutions, a randomly mutated library of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) protease was constructed. We then determined the catalytic efficiency of 107 mutants carrying unique single amino acid substitutions. It has been suggested that genotypes of reduced fitness generally experience a higher fraction of mutations with beneficial effect than genotypes of high fitness (Wilke et al. 2003
). Thus, a second randomly mutated library from a HIV-1 protease carrying a highly deleterious single mutation (D30N) was generated. Similarly, we analyzed the catalytic efficiency of single random variants. We decided to study the HIV-1 protease for 2 reasons. First, numerous studies have described the HIV-1 protease variability and polymorphisms found in naive or protease inhibitortreated infected individuals (Wu et al. 2003
; Ceccherini-Silberstein et al. 2004
), which suggested the high evolvability of this protein. Second, HIV-1 proteins are subjected to a higher mutational burden than cellular proteins due to the error-prone nature of HIV-1 replication. It has been hypothesized that genomes experiencing high mutational burden may face selective pressure to evolve proteins that are more tolerant to change (Guo et al. 2004
).
| Materials and Methods |
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Construction of Random HIV-1 Protease Mutation Libraries in Lambda Phage
Two separate error-prone polymerase chain reaction (PCR) mutagenesis protocols that generate complementary mutational spectra were performed. In the first protocol, PCR was carried out in 10 mM TrisHCl (pH 8.3), 50 mM KCl, 2.5 mM MgCl2, 0.5 mM MnCl2, 1 µM of each oligonucleotide, 5 units Taq polymerase (Promega, Madison, WI), and biased deoxynucleoside triphosphate concentrations (30 µM deoxycytidine triphosphate/1 mM deoxythymidine triphosphate/30 µM deoxyadenosine triphosphate/1 mM deoxy-guanosine triphosphate, Promega), as previously described (Vartanian et al. 1996
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Determination of Protease Enzymatic Activities
The catalytic efficiencies of the different HIV-1 proteases were calculated using a phage lambdabased genetic screening, as previously described (Sices and Kristie 1998
Statistical Analysis
The classification of mutations as deleterious, neutral, or beneficial was based on a paired t-test included in the GraphPad Prism version 4.00 for Windows, San Diego, CA (http://www.graphpad.com/prism/Prism.htm).
| Results |
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HIV-1 Protease Vulnerability to Single Random Amino Acid Substitutions
The HIV-1 protease is an aspartic protease consisting of 2 identical 99-amino acid monomers. The viral protease is the enzyme required for processing the gag and gag-pol polyproteins to yield mature, infectious virions. We used PCR mutagenesis to generate a randomly mutated library of the HIV-1 protease (HXB2 strain) (table 1) averaging 2.2 amino acid substitutions per mutant. Sequencing of 973 individual protease clones identified 107 mutants carrying unique single amino acid substitutions (fig. 1). The 107 single substitutions were distributed through the protein and affected 68 different residues (fig. 1). To determine the enzymatic activity of the different identified single-mutant proteases, a phage lambdabased genetic screen was used. This genetic screen is based on the phage lambda regulatory circuit in which the viral repressor cI is specifically cleaved to initiate the lysogenic to lytic switch (Sices and Kristie 1998
-helix that interacts with the substrate. Nevertheless, the former preserved coding regions were not the only residues in which lethal or deleterious mutations were found (fig. 1). Residues located outside the above 3 critical regions in which we found lethal or highly deleterious mutants (V11, E21, L38, G40, V56, Y59, G68, V75, L76, T80, P81, G94, C95, and T96) were absent or rarely mutated in drug-naive infected individuals (Wu et al. 2003
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Tolerability to Single Random Amino Acid Substitutions of a Low-Fitness HIV-1 Protease
To explore the tolerance to single random amino acid substitutions of a low-fitness HIV-1 protease, we decided to generate a second randomly mutated protease library using, as starting template, a mutated HXB2 protease carrying the single substitution D30N. It has been demonstrated that proteases carrying the substitution D30N, a primary mutation associated to the protease inhibitor nelfinavir resistance, had a very low catalytic efficiency (Martinez-Picado et al. 1999
Fifty-nine unique single mutants were identified, of which 23 were identical to single variants found in the first mutant library. Assessment of the catalytic efficiency of these 23 mutants was performed (fig. 2), and the results were compared with those obtained by the homologous 23 mutants obtained from the first library. In this second mutant library, the enzymatic activities of the different single mutants were compared with the activity of the mutant D30N HXB2 protease (100%) (fig. 2). Now, 12 (52.2%) mutations were lethal (t-test, P < 0.05), 3 (13.0%) were deleterious (t-test, P < 0.05), 6 (26.1%) had no significant effect (t-test, P<0.05), and 2 (8.7%) were significantly beneficial (t-test, P < 0.05) (fig. 2). The average effect on the catalytic efficiency of the 3 deleterious mutations was 73%; these percentages were 4.0% and 950% for the 6 neutral and the 2 beneficial mutations, respectively. When the same analysis was performed with the homologous 23 variants obtained from the wild-type HXB2 protease, a lower proportion of mutations with neutral or beneficial effect were observed. These values were 57%, 26%, 17%, and 0% for lethal, deleterious, neutral, and beneficial mutations, respectively. These results suggested that the same mutations, when expressed together with the highly deleterious mutation D30N, may have a different effect on the protease catalytic efficiency. Of note, the mutation N88D that was lethal for the wild-type HXB2 protease (fig. 1) improved the catalytic efficiency of the enzyme to numbers obtained with the wild-type HXB2 protease (fig. 2). Mutations I64V and I85V also improved the catalytic efficiency of the mutant D30N HXB2 protease, but their effect was modest. Similar to the N88D mutation, the I85V mutation was highly deleterious for the wild-type HXB2 protease (fig. 1). Both mutations, N88D and I85V, were rarely found in isolates from drug-naive infected individuals. Nevertheless, they do not confer drug resistance but can be detected in isolates from protease inhibitortreated individuals (Wu et al. 2003
). This result showed that the former mutations may act as compensatory or stabilizing substitutions in the presence of accompanying deleterious mutations, suggesting that antagonistic epistasis may buffer the effects of deleterious mutations.
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| Discussion |
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There are many examples of proteins highly robust to mutations. They include several enzymes that can tolerate many amino acid changes (Martinez et al. 1996
After showing the low tolerability to single random substitutions of a high-fitness protein, we decided to explore the tolerance to single random amino acid substitutions of a low-fitness HIV-1 protease. The chosen low-fitness protein was the HXB2 protease carrying the single mutation D30N. This substitution is primarily associated to resistance to the HIV-1 protease inhibitor nelfinavir (Johnson et al. 2005
). It is very well known that this mutation impairs the enzyme's catalytic efficiency and the virus replication capacity (Martinez-Picado et al. 1999
; Cabana et al. 2002
). Interestingly, we found a higher proportion of mutations with a neutral or beneficial effect with the low-fitness protease. When epistatic relationships were searched between the highly deleterious mutation D30N and the different single random mutations, strong antagonistic epistasis was found with some mutations. In particular, the substitutions N88D and D30N turned out to be strongly epistatic. Both mutations reduced the catalytic efficiency of the wild-type protease (N88D was lethal and D30N strongly deleterious), but together, their effect was better. Because the mutation D30N confers some resistance to the drug and emerges first during in vivo protease inhibitor resistance development (Martinez-Picado et al. 1999
; Cabana et al. 2002
), the appearance of the mutation N88D would restore the catalytic defect originated by the D30N substitution. Indeed, the D30N and N88D mutations are specifically associated with resistance to nelfinavir in HIV-1infected individuals (Patick et al. 1998
).
In a number of recent studies carried out with RNA viruses, including HIV-1, a tendency toward antagonistic epistasis has been observed (Bonhoeffer et al. 2004
; Burch and Chao 2004
; Sanjuan et al. 2004
). The existence of antagonistic epistasis is not restricted to RNA viruses, and it has also been found in bacteria, eukaryotic proteins, and digital organisms (Maisnier-Patin et al. 2002
; Lenski et al. 2003
; Bridgham et al. 2006
). Especially interesting is the recent work performed by Bridham et al. (2006). They demonstrate the role of antagonistic epistasis in the evolution of eukaryotic proteins such as the hormone receptors. In this study the antagonist epistatic interaction of 2 mutations introduced into an ancestral sequence recapitulates the evolution of present-day receptor specificity. Similar to our findings, an occasional highly deleterious mutation was rescued by a partner mutation that conferred a beneficial trait.
It has been hypothesized that antagonistic epistasis is characteristic of hypersensitive genomes (Elena et al. 2006
; Sanjuan and Elena 2006
); our findings may explain how antagonist epistasis can increase the mutational robustness and evolvability of a protein highly vulnerable to single random mutations.
| Acknowledgements |
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This work was supported by Spanish Minsiterio de Educación y Ciencia project BFU2006-01066/BMC and Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria project PI050022.
| Footnotes |
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Edward Holmes, Associate Editor
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