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Neuroglobin–prion protein interaction: what's the function?
Author(s) -
Palladino Pasquale,
Scaglione Giovanni Luca,
Arcovito Alessandro,
Maria Vitale Rosa,
Amodeo Pietro,
Vallone Beatrice,
Brunori Maurizio,
Benedetti Ettore,
Rossi Filomena
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of peptide science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1387
pISSN - 1075-2617
DOI - 10.1002/psc.1333
Subject(s) - neuroglobin , globin , chemistry , microbiology and biotechnology , peptide , biology , biophysics , biochemistry , hemoglobin
Abstract Neuroglobin and cellular prion protein (PrP C ) are expressed in the nervous system and co‐localized in the retinal ganglion cell layer. Both proteins do not have an unambiguously assigned function, and it was recently reported that PrP C aggregates rapidly in the presence of neuroglobin, whereas it does not aggregate in the presence of myoglobin, another globin with different tissue specificity. Electrostatic complementarity between the unstructured PrP C N ‐terminus and neuroglobin has been proposed to mediate this specific interaction. To verifythis hypothesis experimentally, we have used a combined approach of automated docking and molecular dynamics (MD) studies carried out on short stretches of prion protein (PrP) N ‐terminus to identify the minimal electrostatically interacting aminoacidic sequences with neuroglobin. Subsequently, we have performed the synthesis of these peptides by solid phase methods, and we tested their interaction with neuroglobin by surface plasmon resonance (SPR). Preliminary results confirm unequivocally the specific interaction between synthetic PrP peptides and neuroglobin suggesting a crucial role of PrP C positively charged regions in thisprotein–protein association. Copyright © 2011 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.