Modeling the tertiary structure of the patatin domain of neuropathy target esterase

Neuropathy target esterase (NTE) is a transmembrane protein of unknown function whose specific chemical modification by certain organophosphorus (OP) compounds leads to distal axonopathy. Therefore, solving the 3D structure of NTE would advance the understanding of its pathogenic and physiologic roles. In this study, the tertiary structures of the patatin (catalytic) domain and the N-terminal transmembrane domain of NTE were modeled using the crystal structures of patatin (PDB ID 1oxw) and moricin (PDB ID 1kv4) as templates. Sequence alignments and secondary structure predictions were obtained from the INUB server (Buffalo, NY). O and PyMol were used to build the PNTE and NTE TMD chains from these sequence alignments. The PNTE model was refined in the presence of water using the crystallography and NMR system, while the NTE TMD model was refined in vacuo using the GROMOS implementation in the Swiss PDB viewer. The modeled active site of NTE was found to consist of a Ser966-Asp1086 catalytic dyad, which is characteristic of phospholipase A2 enzymes. The Ser966 Ogamma was located 2.93 A from the Odelta2 of Asp1086. In addition, our NTE model was found to contain a single N-terminal transmembrane domain. This modeling effort provided structural and mechanistic predictions about the catalytic domain of NTE that are being verified via experimental techniques.