Abstract
Phycobiliproteins is a family of chromophore-containing proteins having light-harvesting and antioxidant capacity. The phycocyanin (PC) is a brilliant blue coloured phycobiliprotein, found in rod structure of phycobilisome and has been widely studied for their therapeutic and fluorescent properties. In the present study, the hexameric assembly structure of phycocyanin (Syn-PC) from Synechococcus Sp. R42DM is characterized by X-ray crystallography to understand its light-harvesting and antioxidant properties. The crystal structure of Syn-PC is solved with 2.15 Å resolution and crystallographic R-factors, Rwork/Rfree, 0.16/0.21. The hexamer of Syn-PC is formed by heterodimer of two polypeptide chains, namely, α- and β-subunits. The structure is analysed at atomic level to reveal the chromophore microenvironment and possible light energy transfer mechanism in Syn-PC. The chromophore arrangement in hexamer, deviation angle and distance between the chromophore contribute to the energy transfer efficiency of protein. The structural attributes responsible for the antioxidant potential of Syn-PC are recognized and annotated on its 3-dimensional structure.
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Data availability
Accession numbers: The Syn-PC crystal structure is available at the Protein Data Bank (PDB) with PDB ID 7D6W. The α- and β-subunit gene sequences are available at NCBI Nucleotide database with accession numbers MW526393 and MW526394, respectively.
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Acknowledgements
DM and SNP are thankful to PDPIAS, CHARUSAT and Bhartiben and P. R. Patel Biological Research Laboratory for providing instrumental facility to conduct this research. DM acknowledges the Gujarat Council on Science and Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India (GUJCOST/STI/2021-22/3878) for financial support. The authors acknowledge Indus-2, RRCAT, Indore and Dr. Ravindra D. Makde for the help in diffraction data acquisition.
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SNP, RRS and MGC conducted crystallographic experiments and analysed the data; VK and GDG contributed in reviewing and correcting the structure; SNP and RRS wrote the manuscript; DM contributed in conceptualization and arranging the funding; VK, GDG, NKS and DM proofread the results and edited the manuscript.
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Mukesh G. Chaubey: Deceased.
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Patel, S.N., Sonani, R.R., Chaubey, M.G. et al. Crystal structure of Synechococcus phycocyanin: implications of light-harvesting and antioxidant properties. 3 Biotech 13, 247 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-023-03665-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-023-03665-1