A novel protocol for the design of artificial (β/α)8-barrel proteins

Designing de novo proteins of more than 100 amino acids is still challenging. The creation of artificial (β/α)8-barrel proteins had only one successful example in literature, thank to use of internal spatial symmetry. Here we present a protocol to design de novo (β/α)8-barrel proteins without symmetry restriction.

First, the backbone was created in 4 steps: (I) Rosetta ParametricDesign produced an highly symmetric polyalanine scaffold with no loops; (II) Rosetta Fixed-Backbone Design used the previous output to substitute the alanines in all the position; (III) Loops were constructed with Modeller joining the terminus of the secondary structure elements and (IV) RosettaRelax performed relaxation, creating around 4000 different models. 28 backbone models were selected for the next steps of sequence design.

To design the final proteins for experimental validation, 10 cycles of Rosetta Design and Relax were performed. In the first cycle only apolar amino acids were allowed in hydrophobic regions; in the next 6 cycles, amino acids were allowed based on the definition of 3 regions: core, boundaries and surface. All the amino acids were allowed in each position in the last 3 cycles.

More than 10000 different sequences were created and analyzed in term of amino acid composition, sequence similarity with natural protein, secondary structure prediction, and molecular dynamics simulations. The 30 best candidate sequences have been selected for experimental verification.