When solving a structure of a protein from single-wavelength anomalous diffraction X-ray data, the initial phases obtained by phasing from an anomalously scattering substructure usually need to be improved by an iterated electron-density modification. In this manuscript, the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for segmentation of the initial experimental phasing electron-density maps is proposed. The results reported demonstrate that a CNN with U-net architecture, trained on several thousands of electron-density maps generated mainly using X-ray data from the Protein Data Bank in a supervised learning, can improve current density-modification methods.

Autotaxin (ATX) is an enzyme primarily known for the production of lysophosphatidic acid. Being involved in the development of major human diseases, such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, the enzyme has been featured in multiple studies as a pharmacological target. We previously found that the cannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) could bind and act as an excellent inhibitor of ATX. This study aims to use the cannabinoid scaffold as a starting point to find cannabinoid-unrelated ATX inhibitors, following a funnel down approach in which large chemical libraries sharing chemical similarities with THC were screened to identify lead scaffold types for optimization. This approach allowed us to identify compounds bearing chromone and indole scaffolds as promising ATX inhibitors. Further optimization led to MEY-003, which is characterized by the direct linkage of an N-pentyl indole to the 5,7-dihydroxychromone moiety. This molecule has potent inhibitory activity towards ATX-β and ATX-ɣ as evidenced by enzymatic studies and its mode of action was rationalized by structural biology studies using macromolecular X-ray crystallography.

HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) remains a key target for HIV drug development. As successful management of the disease requires lifelong treatment, the emergence of resistance mutations is inevitable, making development of new RT inhibitors, which remain effective against resistant variants crucial. To this end, previous computationally guided drug design efforts have resulted in catechol diether compounds, which inhibit wildtype RT with picomolar affinities and appear to be promising preclinical candidates. To confirm that these compounds remain potent against Y181C, a widespread mutation conferring resistance to first generation inhibitors, they were screened against the HIV-1 N119 clinical isolate, reported as a Y181C single mutant. In comparison to a molecular clone with the same mutation, N119 appears less susceptible to inhibition by our preclinical candidate compounds. A more detailed sequencing effort determined that N119 was misidentified and carries V106A in combination with Y181C. While both indolizine and naphthalene substituted catechol diethers are potent against the classical Y181C single mutant, the addition of V106A confers more resistance against the indolizine derivatives than the naphthalene derivatives. Crystal structures presented in this study highlight key features of the naphthyl group, which allow these compounds to remain potent in the double mutant, including stronger interactions with F227 and less reliance on V106 for stabilization of the ethoxy-uracil ring, which makes critical hydrogen bonds with other residues in the binding pocket.

Lipoproteins are some of the most abundant proteins in bacteria. With a lipid anchor to the cell membrane, they function as enzymes, inhibitors, transporters, structural proteins, and as virulence factors. Lipoproteins activate the innate immune system and have biotechnological applications. The first lipoprotein was described by Braun and Rehn in 1969. Up until recently, however, work on lipoproteins has been sluggish, in part due to the challenges of handling proteins that are anchored to membranes by covalently linked lipids or are membrane integral. Activity in the area has quickened of late. In the past 5 years, high-resolution structures of the membrane enzymes of the canonical lipoprotein synthesis pathway have been determined, new lipoprotein types have been discovered and the enzymes responsible for their synthesis have been characterized biochemically. This has led to a flurry of activity aimed at developing novel antibiotics targeting these enzymes. In addition, surface exposed bacterial lipoproteins have been utilized as candidate vaccine antigens, and their potential to act as self-adjuvanting antigens is increasingly recognized. A summary of the latest developments in lipoproteins and their synthesis, as well as how this information is being exploited for therapeutic purposes is presented here.

Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) infection is a global health issue since neither a cure nor a vaccine is available. However, the highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has improved the life expectancy for patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) are in almost all HAART and target reverse transcriptase (RT), an essential enzyme for the virus. Even though NRTIs are highly effective, they have limitations caused by RT resistance. The main mechanisms of RT resistance to NRTIs are discrimination and excision. Understanding the molecular mechanisms for discrimination and excision are essential to develop more potent and selective NRTIs. Using protein X-ray crystallography, we determined the first crystal structure of RT in its post-catalytic state in complex with emtricitabine, (-)FTC or stavudine (d4T). Our structural studies provide the framework for understanding how RT discriminates between NRTIs and natural nucleotides, and for understanding the requirement of (-)FTC to undergo a conformation change for successful incorporation by RT. The crystal structure of RT in post-catalytic complex with d4T provides a \"snapshot\" for considering the possible mechanism of how RT develops resistance for d4T via excision. The findings reported herein will contribute to the development of next generation NRTIs.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 remains as a global health issue that is primarily treated with highly active antiretroviral therapy, a combination of drugs that target the viral life cycle. One class of these drugs are non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) that target the viral reverse transcriptase (RT). First generation NNRTIs were troubled with poor pharmacological properties and drug resistance, incentivizing the development of improved compounds. One class of developed compounds are the 2-naphthyl phenyl ethers, showing promising efficacy against the Y181C RT mutation. Further biochemical and structural work demonstrated differences in potency against the Y181C mutation and binding mode of the compounds. This work aims to understand the relationship between the binding mode and ability to overcome drug resistance using macromolecular x-ray crystallography. Comparison of 2-naphthyl phenyl ethers bound to Y181C RT reveal that compounds that interact with the invariant W229 are more capable of retaining efficacy against the resistance mutation. Additional modifications to these compounds at the 4-position, computationally designed to compensate for the Y181C mutation, do not demonstrate improved potency. Ultimately, we highlight important considerations for the development of future HIV-1 drugs that are able to combat drug resistance.

The number of new X-ray crystallography-based submissions to the Protein Data Bank appears to be at the beginning of a decline, perhaps signalling an end to the era of the dominance of X-ray crystallography within structural biology. This letter, from the viewpoint of a young structural biologist, applies the Copernican method to the life expectancy of crystallography and asks whether the technique is still the mainstay of structural biology. A study of the rate of Protein Data Bank depositions allows a more nuanced analysis of the fortunes of macromolecular X-ray crystallography and shows that cryo-electron microscopy might now be outcompeting crystallography for new labour and talent, perhaps heralding a change in the landscape of the field.

The fluorination of lead-like compounds is a common tool in medicinal chemistry to alter molecular properties in various ways and with different goals. We herein present a detailed study of the binding of fluorinated benzenesulfonamides to human Carbonic Anhydrase II by complementing macromolecular X-ray crystallographic observations with thermodynamic and kinetic data collected with the novel method of kinITC. Our findings comprise so far unknown alternative binding modes in the crystalline state for some of the investigated compounds as well as complex thermodynamic and kinetic structure-activity relationships. They suggest that fluorination of the benzenesulfonamide core is especially advantageous in one position with respect to the kinetic signatures of binding and that a higher degree of fluorination does not necessarily provide for a higher affinity or more favorable kinetic binding profiles. Lastly, we propose a relationship between the kinetics of binding and ligand acidity based on a small set of compounds with similar substitution patterns.

The retrovirus HIV-1 has been a major health issue since its discovery in the early 80s. In 2017, over 37 million people were infected with HIV-1, of which 1.8 million were new infections that year. Currently, the most successful treatment regimen is the highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), which consists of a combination of three to four of the current 26 FDA-approved HIV-1 drugs. Half of these drugs target the reverse transcriptase (RT) enzyme that is essential for viral replication. One class of RT inhibitors is nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), a crucial component of the HAART. Once incorporated into DNA, NRTIs function as a chain terminator to stop viral DNA replication. Unfortunately, treatment with NRTIs is sometimes linked to toxicity caused by off-target side effects. NRTIs may also target the replicative human mitochondrial DNA polymerase (Pol γ), causing long-term severe drug toxicity. The goal of this work is to understand the discrimination mechanism of different NRTI analogues by RT. Crystal structures and kinetic experiments are essential for the rational design of new molecules that are able to bind selectively to RT and not Pol γ. Structural comparison of NRTI-binding modes with both RT and Pol γ enzymes highlights key amino acids that are responsible for the difference in affinity of these drugs to their targets. Therefore, the long-term goal of this research is to develop safer, next generation therapeutics that can overcome off-target toxicity.

A novel procedure for the automatic identification of ligands in macromolecular crystallographic electron-density maps is introduced. It is based on the sparse parameterization of density clusters and the matching of the pseudo-atomic grids thus created to conformationally variant ligands using mathematical descriptors of molecular shape, size and topology. In large-scale tests on experimental data derived from the Protein Data Bank, the procedure could quickly identify the deposited ligand within the top-ranked compounds from a database of candidates. This indicates the suitability of the method for the identification of binding entities in fragment-based drug screening and in model completion in macromolecular structure determination.