Circular permutation in proteins

A circular permutation is a relationship between proteins whereby the proteins have a changed order of amino acids in their peptide sequence. The result is a protein structure with different connectivity, but overall similar three-dimensional (3D) shape. In 1979, the first pair of circularly permuted proteins – concanavalin A and lectin – were discovered; over 2000 such proteins are now known. A circular permutation is a relationship between proteins whereby the proteins have a changed order of amino acids in their peptide sequence. The result is a protein structure with different connectivity, but overall similar three-dimensional (3D) shape. In 1979, the first pair of circularly permuted proteins – concanavalin A and lectin – were discovered; over 2000 such proteins are now known. Circular permutation can occur as the result of evolutionary events, posttranslational modifications, or artificially engineered mutations. The two main models proposed to explain the evolution of circularly permuted proteins are permutation by duplication and fission and fusion. Permutation by duplication occurs when a gene undergoes duplication to form a tandem repeat, before redundant sections of the protein are removed; this relationship is found between saposin and swaposin. Fission and fusion occurs when partial proteins fuse to form a single polypeptide, such as in nicotinamide nucleotide transhydrogenases. Circular permutations are routinely engineered in the laboratory to improve their catalytic activity or thermostability, or to investigate properties of the original protein. Traditional algorithms for sequence alignment and structure alignment are not able to detect circular permutations between proteins. New non-linear approaches have been developed that overcome this and are able to detect topology-independent similarities. In 1979, Bruce Cunningham and his colleagues discovered the first instance of a circularly permuted protein in nature. After determining the peptide sequence of the lectin protein favin, they noticed its similarity to a known protein – concanavalin A – except that the ends were circularly permuted. Later work confirmed the circular permutation between the pair and showed that concanavalin A is permuted post-translationally through cleavage and an unusual protein ligation. After the discovery of a natural circularly permuted protein, researchers looked for a way to emulate this process. In 1983, David Goldenberg and Thomas Creighton were able to create a circularly permuted version of a protein by chemically ligating the termini to create a cyclic protein, then introducing new termini elsewhere using trypsin. In 1989, Karolin Luger and her colleagues introduced a genetic method for making circular permutations by carefully fragmenting and ligating DNA. This method allowed for permutations to be introduced at arbitrary sites. Despite the early discovery of post-translational circular permutations and the suggestion of a possible genetic mechanism for evolving circular permutants, it was not until 1995 that the first circularly permuted pair of genes were discovered. Saposins are a class of proteins involved in sphingolipid catabolism and antigen presentation of lipids in humans. Chris Ponting and Robert Russell identified a circularly permuted version of a saposin inserted into plant aspartic proteinase, which they nicknamed swaposin. Saposin and swaposin were the first known case of two natural genes related by a circular permutation. Hundreds of examples of protein pairs related by a circular permutation were subsequently discovered in nature or produced in the laboratory. As of February 2012, the Circular Permutation Database contains 2,238 circularly permuted protein pairs with known structures, and many more are known without structures. The CyBase database collects proteins that are cyclic, some of which are permuted variants of cyclic wild-type proteins. SISYPHUS is a database that contains a collection of hand-curated manual alignments of proteins with non-trivial relationships, several of which have circular permutations. There are two main models that are currently being used to explain the evolution of circularly permuted proteins: permutation by duplication and fission and fusion. The two models have compelling examples supporting them, but the relative contribution of each model in evolution is still under debate. Other, less common, mechanisms have been proposed, such as 'cut and paste' or 'exon shuffling'.