Week 5 HW: Protein Design part II

PART A: SOD1 Binder Peptide Design

The sequence for the original protein is:

// sp|P00441|SODC_HUMAN Superoxide dismutase [Cu-Zn] OS=Homo sapiens OX=9606 GN=SOD1 PE=1 SV=2 MATKAVCVLKGDGPVQGIINFEQKESNGPVKVWGSIKGLTEGLHGFHVHEFGDNTAGCTS AGPHFNPLSRKHGGPKDEERHVGDLGNVTADKDGVADVSIEDSVISLSGDHCIIGRTLVV HEKADDLGKGGNEESTKTGNAGSRLACGVIGIAQ

Mutation occurs at residue 4: Alanine becomes Valine

// 1UXM_1|Chains A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L|SUPEROXIDE DISMUTASE [CU-ZN]|HOMO SAPIENS (9606) ATKVVCVLKGDGPVQGIINFEQKESNGPVKVWGSIKGLTEGLHGFHVHEFGDNTAGCTSAGPHFNPLSRKHGGPKDEERHVGDLGNVTADKDGVADVS IEDSVISLSGDHCIIGRTLVVHEKADDLGKGGNEESTKTGNAGSRLACGVIGIAQ

Part 1: Generate Binders with PepMLM

Adding Methionine to the mutated sequence, the generated peptides were:

Nno. SequenceBinderPerplexity
1WRYYVAVVRWKK28.003177
2WRYYAAVLEWKE16.368043
3WHSYAVVLEWWK19.985691
4WLSGPVAVEWKK11.674838

Comparing to the binding protein, FLYRWLPSRRGG, all of them are quite different. This might be due to the input parameters of the code as well as the fact that the generation is random, which contributes to a higher degree of perplexity.

Part 2: Evaluate Binders with AlphaFold3

The following figures show how the SOD1 protein interacts with each of the four binders:

Figure 1. Visual representation of docking between different mutated binders and SOD1 protein.

The website also provided the following scores:

No. PeptideSequenceipTM scorepTM score
1WRYYVAVVRWKK0.780.85
2WRYYAAVLEWKE0.640.77
3WHSYAVVLEWWK0.740.83
4WLSGPVAVEWKK0.730.83

Part 3: Evaluate Properties of Generated Peptides in the PeptiVerse

No. PeptideSequenceSolubilityHemolysisBinding AffinityMolecular WeightNet charge @ pH = 7Isoelectric PointHydrophobicity (GRAVY)
1WRYYVAVVRWKKSolubleNon-hemolytic (0.066)Medium (7.377 pKd/pKi)1654.0 Da3.7610.45-0.57
2WRYYAAVLEWKESolubleNon-hemolytic (0.057)Weak binding (6.837 pKd/pKi)1613.8 Da-0.236.28-0.68
3WHSYAVVLEWWKSolubleNon-hemolytic (0.090)Weak binding (6.133 pKd/pKi)1603.8 Da-0.156.75-0.12
4WLSGPVAVEWKKSolubleNon-hemolytic (0.039)Weak binding (5.301 pKd/pKi)1399.6 Da0.768.59-0.16

Part 4: Generate Optimized Peptides with moPPIt

The generated binders are shown in the following table:

BinderHemolysisSolubilityHalf-LifeAffinityMotifSpecificity
EAVEGLTAEQIW0.950.59.925.910.340.61
WIIWVTTTKAQK0.940.55.665.770.770.67
ITLDEWLKKQCY0.880.6714.467.160.780.57
TDEQKVQLSAYW0.840.675.646.410.660.53

PART C: Final Project: L-Protein Mutants

The programs were run and the heatmap along with some mutation candidates were obtained:

Amino AcidPosition in ProteinAmino Acid in Protein SequenceScore
L50K2.56
R29C2.39
L39Y2.24
S29C2.04
Q9S2.01
Q29C1.99
P29C1.97
L29C1.96
I50K1.92
L53N1.86
Figure 2. Amino acid-mutation predictions.