Structures of 5-Methylthioribose Kinase Reveal Substrate Specificity and Unusual Mode of Nucleotide Binding
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The methionine salvage pathway is ubiquitous in all organisms, but metabolic variations exist between bacteria and mammals. 5-Methylthioribose (MTR) kinase is a key enzyme in methionine salvage in bacteria and the absence of a mammalian homolog suggests that it is a good target for the design of novel antibiotics. The structures of the apo-form of Bacillus subtilis MTR kinase, as well as its ADP, ADP-PO(4), AMPPCP, and AMPPCP-MTR complexes have been determined. MTR kinase has a bilobal eukaryotic protein kinase fold but exhibits a number of unique features. The protein lacks the DFG motif typically found at the beginning of the activation loop and instead coordinates magnesium via a DXE motif (Asp(250)-Glu(252)). In addition, the glycine-rich loop of the protein, analogous to the "Gly triad" in protein kinases, does not interact extensively with the nucleotide. The MTR substrate-binding site consists of Asp(233) of the catalytic HGD motif, a novel twin arginine motif (Arg(340)/Arg(341)), and a semi-conserved W-loop, which appears to regulate MTR binding specificity. No lobe closure is observed for MTR kinase upon substrate binding. This is probably because the enzyme lacks the lobe closure/inducing interactions between the C-lobe of the protein and the ribosyl moiety of the nucleotide that are typically responsible for lobe closure in protein kinases. The current structures suggest that MTR kinase has a dissociative mechanism.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".