Focus on fungal oxidoreductases for infectious disease drug targets

“The atomic structure of proteins provides an intimate insight into these magnificent macromolecules. This knowledge is crucial to truly understand how they function; whether it is to answer a burning question or to manipulate them – either to enhance if their reactions are desirable, or to inhibit if they are harmful.”   

Prof. Dirk Opperman, University of the Free State, South Africa 

Our research studies the structures of bacterial and fungal oxidoreductases (enzymes) which are possible drug targets to combat infectious disease. The current focus is fungal drug targets for fungal infectious diseases which can be very serious, especially for immune-compromised patients, such as those who are HIV/AIDS positive, organ transplant receivers, patients undergoing chemotherapy, and many more. This research is performed at the University of the Free State’s (UFS’s) Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology¹ and is led by the two Principal Investigators (PIs) of the Biocatalysis group at UFS, Prof. Dirk Opperman, who is a GCRF START Co-Investigator (Co-I), and Prof. Martie Smit. In our laboratory, we have solved the structures of a number of bacterial and fungal enzymes by X-ray crystallography over the past few years, two of the most recent – solving the structures of fungal cytochrome P450 reductase (Dec 2019) and Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenase (Feb 2020) – were assisted by the GCRF START grant and published in the journals Scientific reports² and Catalysts³ respectively, as described later in this article.   

The scale of the Fungal infection and drug resistance challenge  

Currently, there are three classes of anti-fungal drugs that are used to combat infectious fungal disease, but there is an increasing number of drug resistant (and even multi-drug resistant) fungi against these drugs meaning that these pathogenic fungi have become or are becoming resistant to the current medication used to treat patients. If no drugs are effective against invasive opportunistic fungi, the prognosis for immune-compromised patients is very poor, and many people will die. 

“It is therefore imperative that we search for and develop new antifungal compounds to address the growing challenge [of drug-resistance to opportunistic fungi], which impacts countries across Africa, as well as globally. This is especially urgent if the world is to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals of Health and Wellbeing and Food Security by 2030.” 

Dr Carmien Tolmie, University of the Free State, South Africa 

Fungal infections are often underreported and because of this the extent of the situation is not fully known.  In South Africa, this is of particular concern because of our high incidence of HIV/AIDS. For example, one group⁴ reported that 90 % of HIV/AIDS positive patients on prolonged treatment contract oropharyngeal candidiasis (also called Thrush), an infection caused by a yeast, which is a type of fungus called Candida  (Dos Santos Abrantes, McArthur and Africa 2014). However, this is only one statistic, and the problem is much wider. In another example, Cryptococcal meningitis is a deadly brain infection caused by the soil-dwelling fungus Cryptococcus. Worldwide, nearly 220,000 new cases of cryptococcal meningitis occur each year, resulting in 181,000 deaths, most of which occur in sub-Saharan Africa (CDC, 2020). 

Using the powerful beams of Diamond’s synchrotron light to determine protein structures 

Our quest to find new drug targets involves examining the chemical processes that happen in the fungal cell in order to keep the cell alive. We choose an enzyme – a special type of protein involved in these processes – which will be a good target for anti-fungal medication. The experiments we do to produce our protein crystals include molecular biology, protein expression, purification and crystallisation.  We clone the gene that encodes the enzyme and insert it into a suitable host to produce the protein, such as the bacterium Escherichia coli, by protein expression methods. Escherichia coli is easy to manipulate and inexpensive to culture in large volumes. We then isolate the enzyme by protein purification methods which exploit the physicochemical properties of the enzyme to separate the target from the host proteins, and crystallise it before we examine it by X-ray crystallography.  

We use an in-house crystallisation robot at UFS to prepare the crystallisation trials and we regularly collect crystal diffraction data via remote access at the macromolecular beamlines of the UK’s national synchrotron –  Diamond Light Source (Diamond). This is a great help as we can control the beamline equipment from our offices, so we don’t incur the expense of travelling to the UK to use synchrotron techniques essential for our research. While we have X-ray diffractometers at the University of the Free State, they are not nearly as powerful as the beamlines of the Diamond synchrotron. Diamond’s beamline hardware has been developed to such an advanced stage that data collection can proceed very rapidly, enabling us to collect data much faster (minutes) than at our home sources (days). This high throughput is essential when searching for and identify tiny molecules that might potentially bind to the protein and possibly act as inhibitors, as large libraries of fragments must be screened. 

“The brilliant light generated by Diamond (10 billion times brighter than the sun!)  enables us to determine the structure of the proteins to extremely high resolutions, as well as structures from small or weakly diffracting crystals that we cannot study with our own laboratory techniques.” 

Dr Carmien Tolmie, University of the Free State, South Africa 

 We use the protein structure to search for small molecules that will bind to the enzyme and possibly stop it from working (act as inhibitors). In Biocatalysis, knowledge of the protein structure can identify ways in which one can change, or mutate, the enzyme to perform the specific reactions desired.  If the protein is a drug target, the structure can be used in Structure-Based Drug Discovery to develop new medications. This process can also be used for other applications like developing new pesticides for agriculture. Therefore, the next step in the research process is to use fragment screening methods  to identify lead compounds that can be further developed into inhibitors, thus helping develop a next generation drug. The fragment screening is done in collaboration with Prof. Frank von Delft and the XChem group on the I04-1 beamline at Diamond through the GCRF START grant and will be undertaken once Covid19 travel restrictions are lifted.  

Solving the structures of fungal cytochrome P450 reductase and Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenase  

Recently, we were able to solve and gain new insights into the structures and mechanisms of the fungal cytochrome P450 reductase (CPR) from Candida tropicalis and the Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenase BVMO_AFL210 from Aspergillus flavus, research that was made possible by the GCRF START grant. The results were published in the journals Scientific reports and Catalysts respectively, and the research on the CPR was done in collaboration with scientists from the University of Cape Town⁵, who are also part of the START project. The publications were co-authored by START PDRAs Ana Ebrecht (first author on CPR paper) and Rodolpho do Aido Machado (co-author on BVMO_AFL210).  

The CPR plays a pivotal role in primary and secondary metabolism of different species, from bacteria to animals and plants. In fungi, it supplies electrons to enzymes that are vital for the survival of the organism. The CPR mechanism is complex and involves conformational changes that need to be finely tuned to optimise the process. The structural characterisation of the CPR helps to understand how this process occurs and what are the differences with the human homolog, opening the possibility to use it as a drug target. The structure and mutation data of BVMO_AFL210 allowed us to better understand the role of the amino acid at a specific position in the enzyme, in terms of regioselectivity (the position in the substrate where the oxygen atom is inserted) as well as the sulfoxidation (the number of oxygen atoms inserted in a sulfur-containing compound). This residue may be used in future studies for directed evolution experiments to evolve the enzyme to catalyse a desired reaction.  

In order to achieve the results, we first needed to produce pure protein. The proteins were crystallised by the vapour-diffusion method with the Douglas Oryx Nano crystallization robot located in our crystallography lab in our department. In these experiments, a library of 384 crystallisation conditions were screened and a few conditions yielded crystals. These crystals were cryo-cooled and shipped at liquid nitrogen conditions in a specialised container to Diamond where we collected data on the macromolecular crystallography beamlines through remote access. We processed the data and solved the structure with programs from the CCP4 suite of macromolecular data processing software. The proteins were characterised further by investigating their kinetic properties with several spectrophotometric assays using a UV/Visible light spectrophotometer.  

For BVMO_AFL210, we created mutations at a specific position and determined how these mutations alter the biocatalytic profile of the enzyme using whole-cell biotransformation experiments, followed by Gas-Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) analyses. In terms of the fungal cytochrome P450 reductase (CPR), the next steps will be to use the CPR for fragment screening to gain further, more detailed insights. This method uses protein crystals of the target enzyme to identify small molecule fragments that bind to the enzyme. These fragments are then elaborated into larger molecules with higher potency, which will hopefully not only inhibit the specific enzyme, but also the growth of pathogenic fungi.  

Benefitting from increased research capacity through the GCRF START grant 

The grant has contributed greatly to the research capacity of the Biocatalysis and Structural Biology Research group, making it possible to appoint a START Postdoctoral Research Assistant (PDRA) who focused on structural biology research, the research itself partially funded by START. START also helped to develop the skills of the researchers in the group by funding workshops, as well as workshop attendance, and a research exchange of the START PDRA to the UK in 2019. In addition, START has introduced us to world-class scientists at Diamond and other institutions who we can consult if we need advice on our experiments.  

“With this sharing of knowledge, capacity building and cutting-edge research enabled by the GCRF START grant, it is our fervent aim to make a lasting, positive impact in terms of sustainable health, well-being and food security solutions now, and well into the future.”

Dr Carmien Tolmie, University of the Free State, South Africa 

Click here to read more about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals  

Acknowledgements  

We would like to thank Prof. Trevor Sewell from the START Centre of Excellence at the University of Cape Town’s Aaron Klug Centre for Imaging and Analysis for the pivotal role he has played both in GCRF START and Structural Biology in South Africa. The START Centre of Excellence is a collaborative, shared resource where participants in the START programme can access everything they need to get started with their research, such as advice and the necessary equipment which may not be available in their own laboratories elsewhere. This also includes the technological support and expertise to access the UK’s national synchrotron – Diamond Light Source – through the GCRF START grant (such as support with sample preparation, shipping, and remote access experiments). 

Footnotes

[1] Research in the Department falls broadly into three main areas: (i) production of safe and novel food products, (ii) biocatalytic production of chemicals or bioremediation of chemical pollution, and (iii) improvement of human and animal health. Our Biocatalysis Group focuses heavily on biocatalysis which involves the use of one or more enzymes, either as cell-free enzymes or enzymes in whole cells, to convert a substrate into a value-added product. This includes converting alkanes, alcohols, fatty acids or monoterpenes into value added building blocks of pharmaceuticals, bio-plastics, cosmetics, flavours and/or fragrances.

[2] Ebrecht AC, Van der Bergh N, Harrison STL, Smit MS, Sewell BT and DJ Opperman (2019). Biochemical and structural insights into the cytochrome P450 reductase from Candida tropicalis. Scientific Reports 9:20088. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-56516-6: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56516-6

[3] Tolmie C,Do Aido Machado R, Ferroni FM, Smit MS and DJ Opperman (2020). Natural variation in the ‘control loop’ of BVMO_AFL210 and its influence on regioselectivity and sulfoxidation. Catalysts 10(3): 339. doi: 10.3390/catal10030339: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4344/10/3/339

[4] Dos Santos Abrantes PM, McArthur CP, Africa CWJ. Multi-drug resistant oral Candida species isolated from HIV-positive patients in South Africa and Cameroon. Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis 2014;79:222–7.

[5] https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2020-03-12-sa-women-take-the-lead-in-structural-biology