Comparison of the structural and functional properties of RNase A and BS-RNase: a stepwise mutagenesis approach

The original structure of bovine seminal ribonuclease (BS-RNase), solved in 1993, represents a milestone in the story of protein structure, because it represented the first X-ray structure showing two polypeptide chains entangled through their terminal regions. It is generally assumed that this structural feature is the basis of several special biological activities, including a potent antitumor activity, but this has not been yet definitely proved. To assess this hypothesis, in this article we have analyzed the effects of the N-terminal hinge region and/or of Arg80 on the swapping propensity and cytotoxicity in newly designed proteins, using a covalent dimeric variant of bovine pancreatic ribonuclease (RNase A) as scaffold. All the proteins have a very poor cytotoxic activity, independently on the swapping propensity, that can even reach the same value of native BS-RNase. Overall our data suggest that the swapping represents still an essential requisite for the cytotoxic activity, because it keeps the dimeric structure stable even in the reducing cytosolic environment, but other features are essential to design dimeric antitumor ribonucleases, including a strong positive potential at the N-terminal face and a quaternary structure able to evade the cytosolic ribonuclease inhibitor, with or without the interchain disulfide bridges.