A. Aharoni et A. Horovitz, DETECTION OF CHANGES IN PAIRWISE INTERACTIONS DURING ALLOSTERIC TRANSITIONS - COUPLING BETWEEN LOCAL AND GLOBAL CONFORMATIONAL-CHANGES IN GROEL, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America, 94(5), 1997, pp. 1698-1702
A protein engineering approach for detecting and measuring local confo
rmational changes that accompany allosteric transitions in proteins is
described, Using this approach, we can identify interactions that are
made or broken during allosteric transitions, The method is applied t
o probe for changes in pairwise interactions in the chaperonin GroEL d
uring its ATP-induced allosteric transitions, Two pairwise interaction
s are investigated: one between subunits (Asp-41 with Thr-522) and the
other within subunits (Glu-409 with Arg-501), We find that the intrar
ing intersubunit interaction between Asp-41 and Thr-522 changes little
during the allosteric transitions of GroEL, indicating that the hydro
gen bond between these residues is maintained. In contrast, the intras
ubunit salt bridge between Glu-409 and Arg-501 becomes significantly w
eaker during the ATP-induced allosteric transitions of GroEL, Our resu
lts are consistent with the electron microscopy observations of an ATP
-induced hinge movement of the apical domains relative to the equatori
al domains.