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4 Janelia Publications

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    11/01/13 | Caged naloxone reveals opioid signaling deactivation kinetics.
    Banghart MR, Williams JT, Shah RC, Lavis LD, Sabatini BL
    Molecular Pharmacology. 2013 Nov;84(5):687-95. doi: 10.1124/mol.113.088096

    The spatiotemporal dynamics of opioid signaling in the brain remain poorly defined. Photoactivatable opioid ligands provide a means to quantitatively measure these dynamics and their underlying mechanisms in brain tissue. Although activation kinetics can be assessed using caged agonists, deactivation kinetics are obscured by slow clearance of agonist in tissue. To reveal deactivation kinetics of opioid signaling we developed a caged competitive antagonist that can be quickly photoreleased in sufficient concentrations to render agonist dissociation effectively irreversible. Carboxynitroveratryl-naloxone (CNV-NLX), a caged analog of the competitive opioid antagonist NLX, was readily synthesized from commercially available NLX in good yield and found to be devoid of antagonist activity at heterologously expressed opioid receptors. Photolysis in slices of rat locus coeruleus produced a rapid inhibition of the ionic currents evoked by multiple agonists of the μ-opioid receptor (MOR), but not of α-adrenergic receptors, which activate the same pool of ion channels. Using the high-affinity peptide agonist dermorphin, we established conditions under which light-driven deactivation rates are independent of agonist concentration and thus intrinsic to the agonist-receptor complex. Under these conditions, some MOR agonists yielded deactivation rates that are limited by G protein signaling, whereas others appeared limited by agonist dissociation. Therefore, the choice of agonist determines which feature of receptor signaling is unmasked by CNV-NLX photolysis.

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    06/17/13 | Decoupled roles for the atypical, bifurcated binding pocket of the ybfF hydrolase.
    Ellis EE, Adkins CT, Galovska NM, Lavis LD, Johnson RJ
    Chembiochem : A European Journal of Chemical Biology. 2013 Jun 17;14(9):1134-44. doi: 10.1002/cbic.201300085

    Serine hydrolases have diverse intracellular substrates, biological functions, and structural plasticity, and are thus important for biocatalyst design. Amongst serine hydrolases, the recently described ybfF enzyme family are promising novel biocatalysts with an unusual bifurcated substrate-binding cleft and the ability to recognize commercially relevant substrates. We characterized in detail the substrate selectivity of a novel ybfF enzyme from Vibrio cholerae (Vc-ybfF) by using a 21-member library of fluorogenic ester substrates. We assigned the roles of the two substrate-binding clefts in controlling the substrate selectivity and folded stability of Vc-ybfF by comprehensive substitution analysis. The overall substrate preference of Vc-ybfF was for short polar chains, but it retained significant activity with a range of cyclic and extended esters. This broad substrate specificity combined with the substitutional analysis demonstrates that the larger binding cleft controls the substrate specificity of Vc-ybfF. Key selectivity residues (Tyr116, Arg120, Tyr209) are also located at the larger binding pocket and control the substrate specificity profile. In the structure of ybfF the narrower binding cleft contains water molecules prepositioned for hydrolysis, but based on substitution this cleft showed only minimal contribution to catalysis. Instead, the residues surrounding the narrow binding cleft and at the entrance to the binding pocket contributed significantly to the folded stability of Vc-ybfF. The relative contributions of each cleft of the binding pocket to the catalytic activity and folded stability of Vc-ybfF provide a valuable map for designing future biocatalysts based on the ybfF scaffold.

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    04/24/13 | Carbofluoresceins and carborhodamines as scaffolds for high-contrast fluorogenic probes.
    Grimm JB, Sung AJ, Legant WR, Hulamm P, Matlosz SM, Betzig E, Lavis LD
    ACS Chemical Biology. 2013 Apr 24;8(6):1303-10. doi: 10.1021/cb4000822

    Fluorogenic molecules are important tools for advanced biochemical and biological experiments. The extant collection of fluorogenic probes is incomplete, however, leaving regions of the electromagnetic spectrum unutilized. Here, we synthesize green-excited fluorescent and fluorogenic analogues of the classic fluorescein and rhodamine 110 fluorophores by replacement of the xanthene oxygen with a quaternary carbon. These anthracenyl "carbofluorescein" and "carborhodamine 110" fluorophores exhibit excellent fluorescent properties and can be masked with enzyme- and photolabile groups to prepare high-contrast fluorogenic molecules useful for live cell imaging experiments and super-resolution microscopy. Our divergent approach to these red-shifted dye scaffolds will enable the preparation of numerous novel fluorogenic probes with high biological utility.

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    01/01/13 | The chemistry of small-molecule fluorogenic probes.
    Grimm JB, Heckman LM, Lavis LD
    Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science;113:1-34. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-386932-6.00001-6

    Chemical fluorophores find wide use in biology to detect and visualize different phenomena. A key advantage of small-molecule dyes is the ability to construct compounds where fluorescence is activated by chemical or biochemical processes. Fluorogenic molecules, in which fluorescence is activated by enzymatic activity, light, or environmental changes, enable advanced bioassays and sophisticated imaging experiments. Here, we detail the collection of fluorophores and highlight both general strategies and unique approaches that are employed to control fluorescence using chemistry.

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