Abstract
Transduced deoxyribonucleoside kinases (dNK) can be used to kill recipient cells in combination with nucleoside prodrugs. The Drosophila melanogaster multisubstrate dNK (Dm-dNK) displays a superior turnover rate and has a great plasticity regarding its substrates. We used directed evolution to create Dm-dNK mutants with increased specificity for several nucleoside analogs (NAs) used as anticancer or antiviral drugs. Four mutants were characterized for the ability to sensitize Escherichia coli toward analogs and for their substrate specificity and kinetic parameters. The mutants had a reduced ability to phosphorylate pyrimidines, while the ability to phosphorylate purine analogs was relatively similar to the wild-type enzyme. We selected two mutants, for expression in the osteosarcoma 143B, the glioblastoma U-87M-G and the breast cancer MCF7 cell lines. The sensitivities of the transduced cell lines in the presence of the NAs fludarabine (F-AraA), cladribine (CdA), vidarabine and cytarabine were compared to the parental cell lines. The sensitivity of 143B cells was increased by 470-fold in the presence of CdA and of U-87M-G cells by 435-fold in the presence of F-AraA. We also show that a choice of the selection and screening system plays a crucial role when optimizing suicide genes by directed evolution.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- AraA:
-
vidarabine, 9-β-D-arabinofuranosyladenine
- AraC, cytarabine:
-
1-β-D-arabinofuranosylcytosine
- AZT:
-
azidothymidine
- CdA:
-
cladribine, 2-chloro 2′-deoxyadenosine
- dAdo:
-
deoxyadenosine
- dCyd:
-
deoxycytidine
- ddA:
-
dideoxyadenosine
- ddC:
-
(zalcitabine) 2′,3′-dideoxycytidine
- dGuo:
-
deoxyguanosine
- dN:
-
deoxyribonucleoside
- dNK:
-
deoxyribnonucleoside kinase
- dNMP:
-
deoxyribonucleoside monophosphate
- Dm-dNK:
-
Drosophila melanogaster multisubstrate deoxyribonucleoside kinase
- dTTP:
-
thymidine triphosphate
- dUrd:
-
deoxyuridine
- F-AraA:
-
(fludarabine) 9-β-D-arabinofuranosyl-2-fluoroadenine
- Thd:
-
thymidine
References
Arner ES, Eriksson S . Mammalian deoxyribonucleoside kinases. Pharmacol Ther 1995; 67: 155–186.
Sandrini MP, Piskur J . Deoxyribonucleoside kinases: two enzyme families catalyze the same reaction. Trends Biochem Sci 2005; 30: 225–228.
Welin M, Kosinska U, Mikkelsen NE, Carnrot C, Zhu C, Wang L et al. Structures of thymidine kinase 1 of human and mycoplasmic origin. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2004; 101: 17970–17975.
Sabini E, Ort S, Monnerjahn C, Konrad M, Lavie A . Structure of human dCK suggests strategies to improve anticancer and antiviral therapy. Nat Struct Biol 2003; 10: 513–519.
Knecht W, Sandrini MP, Johansson K, Eklund H, Munch-Petersen B, Piskur J . A few amino acid substitutions can convert deoxyribonucleoside kinase specificity from pyrimidines to purines. EMBO J 2002; 21: 1873–1880.
Knecht W, Munch-Petersen B, Piskur J . Identification of residues involved in the specificity and regulation of the highly efficient multisubstrate deoxyribonucleoside kinase from Drosophila melanogaster. J Mol Biol 2000; 301: 827–837.
Culver KW, Ram Z, Wallbridge S, Ishii H, Oldfield EH, Blaese RM . In vivo gene transfer with retroviral vector-producer cells for treatment of experimental brain tumors. Science 1992; 256: 1550–1552.
Guettari N, Loubiere L, Brisson E, Klatzmann D . Use of herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase to improve the antiviral activity of zidovudine. Virology 1997; 235: 398–405.
Sterman DH, Recio A, Vachani A, Sun J, Cheung L, DeLong P et al. Long-term follow-up of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma receiving high-dose adenovirus herpes simplex thymidine kinase/ganciclovir suicide gene therapy. Clin Cancer Res 2005; 11: 7444–7453.
Black ME, Newcomb TG, Wilson HM, Loeb LA . Creation of drug-specific herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase mutants for gene therapy. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1996; 93: 3525–3529.
Christians FC, Scapozza L, Crameri A, Folkers G, Stemmer WP et al. Directed evolution of thymidine kinase for AZT phosphorylation using DNA family shuffling. Nat Biotechnol 1999; 17: 259–264.
Kokoris MS, Sabo P, Adman ET, Black ME . Enhancement of tumor ablation by a selected HSV-1 thymidine kinase mutant. Gene Therapy 1999; 6: 1415–1426.
Munch-Petersen B, Piskur J, Sondergaard L . Four deoxynucleoside kinase activities from Drosophila melanogaster are contained within a single monomeric enzyme, a new multifunctional deoxynucleoside kinase. J Biol Chem 1998; 273: 3926–3931.
Munch-Petersen B, Knecht W, Lenz C, Sondergaard L, Piskur J . Functional expression of a multisubstrate deoxyribonucleoside kinase from Drosophila melanogaster and its C-terminal deletion mutants. J Biol Chem 2000; 275: 6673–6679.
Knecht W, Petersen GE, Sandrini MP, Sondergaard L, Munch-Petersen B, Piskur J . Mosquito has a single multisubstrate deoxyribonucleoside kinase characterized by unique substrate specificity. Nucleic Acids Res 2003; 31: 1665–1672.
Knecht W, Petersen GE, Munch-Petersen B, Piskur J . Deoxyribonucleoside kinases belonging to the thymidine kinase 2 (TK2)-like group vary significantly in substrate specificity, kinetics and feed-back regulation. J Mol Biol 2002; 315: 529–540.
Solaroli N, Bjerke M, Amiri MH, Johansson M, Karlsson A . Active site mutants of Drosophila melanogaster multisubstrate deoxyribonucleoside kinase. Eur J Biochem 2003; 270: 2879–2884.
Solaroli N, Johansson M, Balzarini J, Karlsson A . Enhanced toxicity of purine nucleoside analogs in cells expressing Drosophila melanogaster nucleoside kinase mutants. Gene Therapy 2007; 14: 86–92.
Zheng X, Johansson M, Karlsson A . Retroviral transduction of cancer cell lines with the gene encoding Drosophila melanogaster multisubstrate deoxyribonucleoside kinase. J Biol Chem 2000; 275: 39125–39129.
Griffiths AD, Tawfik DS . Directed evolution of an extremely fast phosphotriesterase by in vitro compartmentalization. EMBO J 2003; 22: 24–35.
Cherry JR, Lamsa MH, Schneider P, Vind J, Svendsen A, Jones A et al. Directed evolution of a fungal peroxidase. Nat Biotechnol 1999; 17: 379–384.
Kim YW, Choi JH, Kim JW, Park C, Cha H, Lee SB et al. Directed evolution of Thermus maltogenic amylase toward enhanced thermal resistance. Appl Environ Microbiol 2003; 69: 4866–4874.
Zhao H, Arnold FH . Directed evolution converts subtilisin E into a functional equivalent of thermitase. Protein Eng 1999; 12: 47–53.
Knecht W, Willemse J, Stenhamre H, Andersson M, Berntsson P, Furebring C et al. Limited mutagenesis increases the stability of human carboxypeptidase U (TAFIa) and demonstrates the importance of CPU stability over proCPU concentration in down-regulating fibrinolysis. FEBS J 2006; 273: 778–792.
Mikkelsen NE, Johansson K, Karlsson A, Knecht W, Andersen G, Piskur J et al. Structural basis for feedback inhibition of the deoxyribonucleoside salvage pathway: studies of the Drosophila deoxyribonucleoside kinase. Biochemistry 2003; 42: 5706–5712.
Welin M, Skovgaard T, Knecht W, Zhu C, Berenstein D, Munch-Petersen B et al. Structural basis for the changed substrate specificity of Drosophila melanogaster deoxyribonucleoside kinase mutant N64D. FEBS J 2005; 272: 3733–3742.
Johansson K, Ramaswamy S, Ljungcrantz C, Knecht W, Piskur J, Munch-Petersen B et al. Structural basis for substrate specificities of cellular deoxyribonucleoside kinases. Nat Struct Biol 2001; 8: 616–620.
Igarashi K, Hiraga S, Yura T . A deoxythymidine kinase deficient mutant of Escherichia coli II. Mapping and transduction studies with phage phi 80. Genetics 1967; 57: 643–654.
Ausubel F, Brent R, Kingston RE, Moore DD, Seidman JG, Smith JA et al. (eds). Short Protocols in Molecular Biology. Wiley: USA, 1995.
Bradford MM . A rapid and sensitive method for the quantitation of microgram quantities of protein utilizing the principle of protein–dye binding. Anal Biochem 1976; 72: 248–254.
Laemmli UK . Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4. Nature 1970; 227: 680–685.
Knecht W, Bergjohann U, Gonski S, Kirschbaum B, Loffler M . Functional expression of a fragment of human dihydroorotate dehydrogenase by means of the baculovirus expression vector system, and kinetic investigation of the purified recombinant enzyme. Eur J Biochem 1996; 240: 292–301.
Cornish-Bowden A . Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics. Portland Press Ltd: London, 1995.
Liebecg C . IUBMB Biochemical Nomenclature and Related Documents. Portland Press Ltd: London, 1992.
Acknowledgements
We thank the Danish and Swedish Research Councils, the Danish Cancer Society, Swedish Cancer Fonden and the Meyer Foundation (Copenhagen) for their financial support.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Knecht, W., Rozpedowska, E., Le Breton, C. et al. Drosophila deoxyribonucleoside kinase mutants with enhanced ability to phosphorylate purine analogs. Gene Ther 14, 1278–1286 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.gt.3302982
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.gt.3302982
Keywords
This article is cited by
-
Development of gene therapy in association with clinically used cytotoxic deoxynucleoside analogues
Cancer Gene Therapy (2009)