Controlled cleavage of KLH1 and KLH2 by the V8 protease from Staphylococcus aureus -: Reassociation, electrophoretic and transmission electron microscopy study of peptide fragments

The reassociation behaviour of protease V8-cleaved peptides from KLH1 and KLH2, the two hemocyanin isoforms from the giant keyhole limpet Megathura crenulata, has been studied by transmission electron microscopy of negatively stained specimens and SDS/PAGE. Reassociation of the complete mixture of protease cleavage products and of combinations of peptide fragments purified by HPLC was performed in the presence of 100 mM CaCl2 and 100 mM MgCl2 at pH 7.4, over a period of 1 to 4 weeks. The V8 protease splits KLH1 into peptide fragments containing the functional units abc, def, defg, defgh, g and h. This mixture of peptide fragments reassociated to form helical tubular polymers, with a diameter of approximate to 25 nm. The single functional units g and it were not incorporated into the polymer. An essentially identical polymer was formed from the re-mixed HPLC-purified fragments abc, def and defg alone. As with uncleaved subunit, the tubular polymer of V8-cleaved KLH1 forms bundles. The combination of peptides def and defg led to the formation of short are-like filamentous structures, which aggregated but showed little tendency to associate into larger polymers. The KLH1 peptide fragments abe and def alone, did not reassociate and in combination their potential to form polymers was very low. With KLH2, the V8 protease generated peptide fragments containing the functional units nbc, defg, defgh and h, which in combination slowly reassociated to form a tubular polymer significantly different to that obtained from the KLH1 V8 fragments. The three-functional unit fragment abe from KLH2 showed no tendency to polymerize and the combination of peptides defg + defgh generated only disordered aggregates, with some indication of malformed tubules. The combination of biochemical and electron microscopical methods enabled the characterization of these polymers with respect to peptide composition and higher order structure.