The anti-lipopolysaccharide factor ALF-Pm3 is a 98-residue protein identified in hemocytes from the black tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon. It was expressed in Pichia pastoris from the constitutive glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase promoter as a folded and (15)N uniformly labeled rALF-Pm3 protein. Its 3D structure was established by NMR and consists of three alpha-helices packed against a four-stranded beta-sheet. The C(34)-C(55) disulfide bond was shown to be essential for the structure stability. By using surface plasmon resonance, we demonstrated that rALF-Pm3 binds to LPS, lipid A and to OM-174, a soluble analogue of lipid A. Biophysical studies of rALF-Pm3/LPS and rALF-Pm3/OM-174 complexes indicated rather high molecular sized aggregates, which prevented us to experimentally determine by NMR the binding mode of these lipids to rALF-Pm3. However, on the basis of striking structural similarities to the FhuA/LPS complex, we designed an original model of the possible lipid A-binding site of ALF-Pm3. Such a binding site, located on the ALF-Pm3 beta-sheet and involving seven charged residues, is well conserved in ALF-L from Limulus polyphemus and in ALF-T from Tachypleus tridentatus. In addition, our model is in agreement with experiments showing that beta-hairpin synthetic peptides corresponding to ALF-L beta-sheet bind to LPS. Delineating lipid A-binding site of ALFs will help go further in the de novo design of new antibacterial or LPS-neutralizing drugs.
(c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.