Intrinsic Disorder in PTEN and its Interactome Confers Structural Plasticity and Functional Versatility

Malaney, Prerna; Pathak, Ravi Ramesh; Xue, Bin; Uversky, Vladimir N.; Davé, Vrushank

doi:10.1038/srep02035

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Published: 20 June 2013

Intrinsic Disorder in PTEN and its Interactome Confers Structural Plasticity and Functional Versatility

Prerna Malaney¹^na1,
Ravi Ramesh Pathak¹^na1,
Bin Xue³^na1,
Vladimir N. Uversky^3,4,5^na1 &
…
Vrushank Davé^1,2^na1

Scientific Reports volume 3, Article number: 2035 (2013) Cite this article

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Abstract

IDPs, while structurally poor, are functionally rich by virtue of their flexibility and modularity. However, how mutations in IDPs elicit diseases, remain elusive. Herein, we have identified tumor suppressor PTEN as an intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) and elucidated the molecular principles by which its intrinsically disordered region (IDR) at the carboxyl-terminus (C-tail) executes its functions. Post-translational modifications, conserved eukaryotic linear motifs and molecular recognition features present in the C-tail IDR enhance PTEN's protein-protein interactions that are required for its myriad cellular functions. PTEN primary and secondary interactomes are also enriched in IDPs, most being cancer related, revealing that PTEN functions emanate from and are nucleated by the C-tail IDR, which form pliable network-hubs. Together, PTEN higher order functional networks operate via multiple IDP-IDP interactions facilitated by its C-tail IDR. Targeting PTEN IDR and its interaction hubs emerges as a new paradigm for treatment of PTEN related pathologies.

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Introduction

The concept of “Intrinsic Disorder” in proteins has rapidly gained attention as the preponderance and functional roles of IDPs are increasingly being identified in eukaryotic proteomes^1,2. Structured proteins adopt energetically stable three-dimensional conformations with minimum free energy. In contrast, IDPs, due to their unique amino acid sequence arrangements, cannot adopt energetically favorable conformations and, thus, lack stable tertiary structure in vitro³. This structural plasticity allows IDPs to operate within numerous functional pathways, conferring multiple regulatory functions^4,5,6. Indeed, mutations in and dysregulation of IDPs are associated with many diseases including cancer^1,6,7, signifying that IDPs play vital roles in functional pathways. Evidence suggests that ~80% of proteins participating in processes driving cancer contain IDRs⁶. For example, tumor suppressor p53 as an IDP, functions via its C-terminal IDR, which simultaneously exists in different conformations, each of which function differently¹. Since PTEN is the second most frequently mutated tumor suppressor with versatile functions⁸, we hypothesized that PTEN may contain IDR(s) that can be exploited for therapeutic targeting in cancers and diseases associated with pathogenic PI3K/Akt/mTOR (Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase/Akt/ mammalian Target of Rapamycin) signaling^9,10,11.

PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog), a 403 amino acid dual protein/lipid phosphatase converts phosphatidylinositol(3,4,5)-triphosphate (PIP3) to phosphatidylinositol(4,5)-bisphosphate (PIP2), thereby regulating the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway involved in oncogenic signaling, cell proliferation, survival and apoptosis¹². PTEN, as a protein phosphatase, autodephosphorylates itself¹³. Deficiency or dysregulation of PTEN drives endometrial, prostate, brain and lung cancers and causes neurological defects^14,15. PTEN is activated after membrane association¹⁶, providing conformational accessibility to the catalytic phosphatase domain (PD) that converts PIP3 to PIP2¹⁶ (Figure 1a). Because PTEN reduces PIP3 levels and inhibits pathogenic PI3K signaling, therapeutically targeting PTEN to the membrane to enhance its activity is of significance in treating several pathologies including cancer.

PTEN crystal structure revealed that the PD and membrane-binding C2 domains are ordered (Figure 1b); however, the structures of the N-terminus, the CBR3 loop and the 50 amino-acid C-tail remain undetermined¹⁷. The C-tail is of particular significance due to its ability to regulate PTEN membrane association, activity, function, stability^18,19,20,21. Herein, we identify PTEN as an IDP with its C-tail being intrinsically disordered. The PTEN C-tail IDR is heavily phosphorylated by a number of kinases and regulates the majority of PTEN functions, including a large number of PPIs that forms the PTEN primary and secondary interactomes, comprising critical functional protein hubs, most of which are related to cancer. Our analysis provides a mechanistic insight into the functioning of the PTEN C-tail IDR at the systems level, including inter- and intra-molecular interactions that will aid in designing drugs to enhance the lipid phosphatase activity of PTEN for the pharmacotherapy of cancers and pathological conditions driven by hyperactive PI3K-signaling.

Results

PTEN is an IDP

Utilizing two disorder prediction software programs, PONDR-VLXT and PONDR-FIT^22,23, we have identified PTEN as a bona fide IDP. PTEN has a highly disordered, functionally versatile, C-tail encompassing amino acids 351–403 (Figure 1a and 1c). A PDZ-binding motif (amino acids 401–403) is part of the disordered region. Thus, the PTEN C-tail IDR facilitates interactions with a vast repertoire of PDZ domain-containing proteins (Figs. 1a and 2d). The unique amino acid composition of IDRs dictates their structural plasticity^3,23,24. IDRs are enriched in polar and structure-breaking amino acid residues, depleted in hydrophobic and aromatic residues and, rarely, contain Cys and Asn residues^1,23,24. The ordered region of PTEN (AA 1–350) has 25% hydrophobic, 43% polar, 9% structure breaking, 13% aromatic and 9% Cys and Asn residues. In contrast, the PTEN C-tail (AA 351–403) is enriched in polar (66%) and structure breaking (11%) residues and is depleted in hydrophobic (11%), aromatic (6%) and Cys and Asn residues (6%), indicating an ideal profile for the IDR (Figs. 1d and 1f ). Further, compositional analysis of PTEN using the Composition Profiler²⁴ reveals that the disordered region in PTEN is enriched in polar residues (specifically H, T, D, S and E) and structure breaking residues (specifically P) but is depleted in all aromatic and hydrophobic residues in addition to cysteine. (Figure 1e), again exhibiting universal characteristics of IDPs. Taken together, we establish the PTEN C-tail as a functional IDR and classify PTEN as a new IDP.

Low mutability of PTEN IDR suggests critical biological functions

Mutations in PTEN are associated with several types of cancers¹⁴. To correlate PTEN mutations to its structure, we analyzed all human PTEN mutations deposited in the COSMIC Database (http://www.sanger.ac.uk/genetics/CGP/cosmic/). The disordered PTEN C-tail IDR shows unusually low mutability (~8-fold less) compared to any other 50 amino-acid stretch of PTEN (Figure 2a and 2b). To confirm our finding of the low mutability of the C-tail region, we also analyzed all human PTEN mutations deposited in the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD, http://www.hgmd.cf.ac.uk/ac/index.php)²⁵ (Figure 2a), cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics^26,27 (Supplementary Figure S1) and the Roche Cancer Genome Database²⁸ (Supplementary Figure S1) which was consistent with the COSMIC database mutational data. It is likely that evolutionary pressure maintains a survival advantage and ipso facto abrogates progeny with mutations in highly functional protein sequences^29,30,31. Thus, the functionally versatile PTEN C-tail IDR cannot afford mutations, hence showing least number of mutations. It is equally likely that mutations in individual residues within the IDR are well tolerated, as the evolutionary pressure may have shifted to maintaining global biophysical properties and structural malleability of the IDR to safeguard the critical protein function²⁹. In either case, on a global scale, the versatile structural pliability of the PTEN IDR dictates functional diversity and biological activities²⁹. Thus, the slightest functional perturbation in the PTEN IDR due to mutations, either within the IDR or in domains interacting with it, could disrupt cellular homeostasis as seen in cancers and neurodegenerative disorders associated with PTEN mutations. This is supported by our data indicating that PTEN, as an IDP when mutated, causes several cancers¹⁴.

Moreover, the PTEN C-tail IDR exhibits preferential mutations in aromatic residues compared to the ordered region (Figure 2c). The ratio of mutations in aromatic residues in the disordered to ordered region is much higher than any other class of residues (structure breaking, hydrophobic, polar, Cys and Asn), likely attributed to the structure-imparting property of aromatic residue³². Specifically, aromatic residues within IDRs engage in stacking interactions, enhancing nucleation between distinct residues at functional protein-protein interaction interfaces³². Thus loss of this critical structural and functional property imparted by aromatic residues is associated with a disease phenotype. In summary, the disordered PTEN C-tail IDR has functionally evolved to contain a combination of peptides that cannot tolerate mutations.

Disorderliness in PTEN primary interactome drives functional networks

Protein-Protein Interactions (PPIs) typically occur between conserved, structurally rigid regions of two or more proteins, particularly ordered proteins that display energetically favorable, highly-folded conformations. Intriguingly, IDPs lack tertiary structure, yet engage in PPIs, albeit with lower affinities but high specificity¹. The lack of structure within IDPs enhances their biophysical landscape, conferring them with the ability to attain structural complementarities required for PPIs. Since IDPs do not conform to a stable structure, they are less compact, providing a larger physical interface and energetic adaptability to interact with multiple proteins^1,7. Thus, conditional folding within IDPs is effectively utilized for interaction with a multitude of binding partners, enabling them to shuttle between several signaling cascades as efficient “cogs”, mediating and regulating PPIs^{4,7,33,34,35,36}. Indeed, we discovered that PTEN, being an IDP, interacted with more than 400 proteins (Supplementary Table S1) when a combination of online software, literature search and database mining tools were used. Proteins with known PTEN interaction domains were classified as “mapped” (Figure 2d and Supplementary Table S1), whereas those with uncharacterized/predicted interactions were designated as “unmapped” proteins (Supplementary Table S1). Derivation of PTEN primary interactome from the mapped proteins using Cytoscape (http://www.cytoscape.org/) indicated that PTEN disorderliness is efficiently used for interaction with 40 proteins, most existing in distinct functional pathways (Figure 2d, 2e and Supplementary Table S2).

Interestingly, within the PTEN primary interactome, 60% of interactions occurred within the disordered C-tail region. Furthermore, disorder analysis on the primary interactome revealed that 33 proteins (>82%) were IDPs, of which two-thirds interacted with the C-tail IDR (Figure 2e, 2f and Supplementary Table S3), indicating a high propensity for disorder-disorder (D-D)-type interactions.

In order to study evolutionary conservation of the PTEN C-tail and its interactions across species, several sequence alignments were performed (Figure 3a). Sequence alignment of the entire PTEN protein from different animal species shows a good conservation of the catalytic phosphatase domain between vertebrates and invertebrates with 100% sequence conservation for the dual specificity phosphatase catalytic motif HCKAGKGR⁸ (Supplementary Figure S2). The C-tail shows good conservation in the vertebrate species, likely indicating the recent emergence of the function of PTEN C-tail region in regulating PTEN activity and enriching its PPI potential, translating to its versatile functions. In order to examine the conservation across species for the PTEN C-tail interacting proteins, a literature search was conducted to identify experimentally verified domains/motifs involved in interaction with the C-tail. The domains involved in these interactions with the C-tail for 13 proteins with relevant literature sources for these interactions are part of Supplementary Figure S3. Subsequent sequence alignments for these thirteen proteins (Supplementary Figure S3) shows good sequence homology for the domains/motifs involved in interaction with the PTEN C-tail. These findings support the concept that the PTEN C-tail has evolved in vertebrates to incorporate features that allow it to interact with these proteins.

Further, to assess whether PTEN acts as a functional hub protein and regulates pathways through its protein-binding partners, we performed functional network analysis using the Analyze Network option from MetaCore (GeneGo Inc, Thomson Reuters, 2011) (Figure 3b). The PTEN primary interactome was used as input with PTEN as the central node. We identified multiple interactions not only between PTEN (node) and SMAD2/3, AR, PCAF, ANAPC3, ANAPC4, Caveolin, β-arrestin 1 and p53 (edges), but also amongst the edge proteins themselves (Figure 3b). Interestingly, all the edge proteins are themselves highly disordered (Supplementary Table S3). Further supporting this finding, our functional enrichment revealed that 13 proteins (one-third) of the PTEN primary interactome were cancer-related and highly disordered (Figure 4a, Supplementary Table S3 and S4).

Pliant PTEN secondary interactome relays function of the primary network

The disorderliness of the PTEN primary interactome prompted us to investigate the possibility that PTEN radiates its function via a malleable network of IDPs that extends beyond the primary interactome. Therefore, we derived the PTEN secondary interactome (Supplementary Table S5) and ascertained the interaction of 13 cancer-related proteins identified in the primary interactome (Figure 4a). The entire PTEN secondary interactome consisted of 299 IDPs, of which 193 IDPs (two-thirds) were associated with the 13 cancer-related proteins, generating a “PTEN-Cancer Interactome” (Figure 4, Supplementary Table S5 and S6). Thus, two-third of the IDPs within the PTEN secondary interactome associates with one-third of the cancer related IDPs within the PTEN primary interactome, indicating that cancer-related functions are driven by IDPs in the PTEN interactome and that the flexibility of IDP-IDP interactions modulates diverse functions; dysregulation of which causes cancers.

Functional network analysis of the 193 cancer-related IDPs identified 31 proteins that shared multiple nodes (Figure 5a and Supplementary Table S6). We overlaid this network with the cancer-related IDPs of the primary interactome to predict functionally critical protein hubs (indicated in yellow circles in Figure 5a and b). Our analysis revealed 16 proteins as highly populated hubs, most enriched in disordered regions, again demonstrating that a high degree of structural and functional association between the hubs required IDP-IDP interactions (Figure 5b). The involvement of these hubs in multiple, critical oncogenic signaling pathways make them attractive drug targets in the field of clinical oncology. Our bioinformatic analysis resonates well with observed biological phenomena as seen in the case of MDM2 protein, which is a major PPI hub regulating p53. Interaction of the human androgen receptor (AR) protein and MDM2 influences prostate cell growth and apoptosis³⁷. Mdm2-Daxx interaction activates p53 following DNA damage³⁸ and Daxx binds and inhibits AR function³⁹. Conversely, the breast cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1) interacts directly with AR and enhances AR target genes, such as p21(WAF1/CIP1), that may result in the increase of androgen-induced cell death in prostate cancer cells⁴⁰. Further, BRCA1 complexes with Smad3 and is inactivated, leading to early-onset familial breast and ovarian cancer⁴¹. Within the same network, MDM2 inhibits the transcriptional activity of SMAD proteins including SMAD3⁴², thereby, emerging as a major player in prostrate, breast and ovarian cancer. Loss of PTEN, on the other hand, results in resistance to apoptosis by activating the MDM2-mediated antiapoptotic mechanism. We also identified proteins like NCL, DAXX and SUMO that play critical roles in mediating cancers as being a part of the PTEN centric cancer interactome (Figure 5b). Interestingly, all of the 16 predicted hubs can be traced back to PTEN (either directly or through other signaling adaptors) reinforcing our analysis (Figure 5c). These findings support the prevailing concept of preferential interaction between disordered regions of two distinct proteins; with PTEN being the common disordered interacting hub, giving functional centrality to PTEN in many critical cellular pathways.

To further validate our methodology in using intrinsic disorder and cancer as filters to identify key signaling hubs, we compared our data sets with a previously published cancer signaling data set. We derived 7 common hubs (Supplementary Table S7), which were extended using the expansive human signaling network described previously^43,44,45,46 to obtain the PTEN associated cancer interactome (Figure 6a). An extensive disease associated network analysis using IPA validated our predictions as all the seven predicted hubs had an extensive cross-talk across multiple cancer disease types (Figure 6b).

Modulation of PTEN PPIs by linear binding motifs

Recent evidence has shown that IDPs mediate PPIs via short linear amino acid sequences (~20 residues) called Molecular Recognition Elements (MoREs) or Molecular Recognition Features (MoRFs)^35,47. MoRFs undergo disorder-to-order transitions upon binding and adopt thermodynamically stable well-defined structures⁴⁷, increasing the propensity of IDPs to interact with a vast repertoire of proteins. MoRFs also display molecular recognition elements that capture the binding partner proteins with high specificity. These partner-dependent conformational differences are critical to imparting versatile binding properties to IDRs³⁵.

Since the PTEN IDR engages in multiple PPIs, we tested the possibility for the existence of MoRFs. The MORFPred algorithm⁴⁸ revealed that PTEN contains major MoRF sites at amino acids 273–279 (part of the disordered CBR3 loop of the C2 domain), amino acids 339–347 (in close vicinity of the disordered C-tail) and amino acids 395–403 (part of the disordered C-tail) (Figure 7a and Supplementary Figure S4). The primary restriction of MoRFs to the PTEN C-tail IDR or adjacent regions indicates that these MoRFs directly participate in modulating PPI functions (Figure 7a). However, mutational analysis within MoRFs is required to establish their active role in functional PPIs.

Protein-protein interactions are also facilitated by very short motifs (3–10 amino acids) called Short Linear Motifs (SLiMs) or Eukaryotic Linear Motifs (ELMs)^49,50. Because of their short sequences, ELMs arise/disappear by simple point mutations, providing the evolutionary plasticity that the ordered protein domains lack. Thus, ELMs easily adapt to novel interactions in signaling pathways, where rapid assembly/disassembly of multi-protein complexes is a prerequisite. The frequent occurrence of ELMs in a typical proteome indicates their critical cellular functions. Consistent with this notion, a higher density of ELMs are observed in hub proteins and IDPs⁵⁰. Since ELMs have short sequences, they interact with low-affinity, however, they engage in highly cooperative binding in protein complexes, triggering productive signaling⁵⁰. Therefore, at increased intracellular local concentrations they competitively bind to mutually overlapping physiological targets of each other as seen with PDZ, SH2 and PTB interaction domains found in cancer-associated proteins and in IDRs^49,50. As PTEN contains a PDZ-binding motif within the IDR (Figure 1a and c), we probed for the existence and features of ELMs in PTEN using The Eukaryotic Linear Motif Resource (http://elm.eu.org). We identified 34 different classes of ELMs in PTEN that mediate PPIs (Supplementary Figure S5). Interestingly, the four ELMs that are most conserved (conservation score>0.75) occurred within the PTEN C-tail IDR, indicating its high level of functional/biological significance (Figure 7b). ELM functions are further modulated by post-translational modifications, mainly by phosphorylation⁵⁰. Indeed, the PTEN IDR possesses nine phosphorylation sites^51,52 (Figure 7c).

PTEN phosphorylation modulates intramolecular association and PPI function

Post-translational Modifications (PTMs) in IDPs facilitate PPIs⁵. Modifying enzymes readily dock on structurally flexible IDRs, making them a hot spot for PTMs^4,7,53,54. Consistent with this notion, regulatory cancer-associated proteins have twice as much disorder and undergo more frequent phosphorylation/dephosphorylation than other cellular proteins as predicted by DISPHOS (a DISorder-enhanced PHOSphorylation prediction software)⁵⁴, implicating a tight interconnection between protein phosphorylation and disorder. Consistent with the function of PTM in IDRs, clustering of Ser and Thr phosphorylation sites (Figure 7c) in the C-tail IDR regulates PTEN stability, membrane association and activity^19,20. Phosphorylation in the PEST [proline (P), glutamic acid (E), serine (S) and threonine (T)] domain within the C-tail IDR (amino acids 352 to 399) inhibits degradation of PTEN⁵¹. Casein kinase II (CK II), Glycogen synthase kinase 3-beta (GSK3-β) and PLK3 (Polo-like kinase 3) phosphorylate Ser and Thr residues within the IDR, each providing a distinct function⁵¹ (Figure 7c). The microtubule-associated serine/threonine (MAST), serine/threonine kinase 11(STK11) or LKB1 and casein kinase I (CKI) kinases have also been implicated in PTEN phosphorylation. STK11/LKB1 modifies T383, while CKI modifies T366, S370 and S385⁵². Indeed, our DISPHOS prediction for C-tail IDRs supports these experimental observations (Supplementary Figure S6).

Substrate-kinase interactions are typically of the disordered-ordered (D-O) type and are stabilized by hydrogen bonding (Figure 7c), a hallmark of IDRs⁵⁴. Indeed, computational analysis revealed that large ordered regions comprising the catalytic domains of CKII, GSK3B, PLK3, Rak and Src kinases interact with the C-tail IDR (Supplementary Table S8), indicating that PTEN engages in D-O type intermolecular interactions with the modifying kinases.

At the intramolecular level, phosphorylation at C-tail residues triggers a conformational change in PTEN, inhibiting its membrane association and, therefore, its lipid phosphatase activity^18,19,21,55. The phosphorylated C-tail IDR folds onto the PD and C2 domains giving rise to the “closed-closed” conformation of PTEN (Figure 8a) that is incapable of interaction with the membrane^18,20. The “closed- closed” form of PTEN is enzymatically inactive and cannot convert PIP3 to PIP2. The identification of the exact resides involved in this intramolecular interaction remains an active area of research^18,20,56.

It was recently shown that the phosphorylation events of PTEN occur in two independent cascades of ordered events, with the S380–S385 cluster being modified prior to the S361–S70 cluster⁵². Even within the two clusters, the phosphorylation events follow a specific pattern with a distributive kinetic mechanism. Not surprisingly, distributive kinetics is energetically favorable on protein domains that are highly disordered with multiple ensembles of flexible structures⁵². Thus the dynamic nature of these phosphorylation events is contingent to the inherent flexibility in the PTEN structure driven by intrinsically disordered C-tail crucial for PTEN stability and localization within the cell (Figure 8a).

Targeting intrinsic disorder in PTEN and its interactome

Drug targeting to critical protein regions can mitigate aberrant cellular processes driving oncogenesis⁵⁷. However, despite numerous clinical trials with molecularly targeted therapies, failure rates for cancer treatments remain high. Conventional therapies targeting pathway-specific kinases suffer from “off-target effects” and often fail due to the emergence of compensatory and alternative pathways⁵⁸. As a novel approach, facile drug targeting to IDRs within critical signaling hub proteins is highly plausible^59,60,61. Moreover, as IDRs undergo extensive PTMs⁵³ and engage in PPIs^4,34,36, the multitude of resulting protein interactions (normal and aberrant) can be targeted concomitantly with a cocktail of distinct inhibitors, which dampens oncogenic signaling⁶⁰.

Indeed, targeting PPIs is a more selective treatment strategy over conventional enzyme inhibitors⁶⁰. However, disruption of multiple ordered interfaces within PPIs by small molecule inhibitors remains challenging⁶². The advantage of targeting IDPs engaged in PPIs is that, unlike ordered proteins, they engage in PPIs via MoRFs or ELMs, which are small peptide regions that bind with low affinity and thus are susceptible to disruption by small molecule inhibitors⁵⁹. Consistent with this notion, small molecules disrupted highly disordered complexes of p53-Mdm2 and c-Myc-Max interactions by inducing order upon binding^60,63. Likewise, targeting the PTEN C-tail IDR may reduce its intra- and inter-molecular interactions and limit accessibility to enzymes mediating PTMs (Figure 8b), providing a means to increase PTEN activity. Our analysis shows that since the C-tail IDR is rich in conserved MoRFs/SLiMS, targeting these regions will prove to be a rational therapeutic modality for a large number of cancers that show compromised PTEN activity or hyperactivation of the oncogenic PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway^9,10,11. Since reductions in the levels and activity of PTEN are sufficient to drive oncogenesis^11,14,15, increasing PTEN activity is an ideal therapy for cancers associated with hyperactive PI3K-signaling.

Discussion

Recent studies on genome- and proteome-wide molecular alterations in diseases indicate that pathological conditions are caused by perturbations in complex, highly interconnected biological networks⁶⁴. Thus, current reductionist approach of studying structure-function relationship in diseases has limited our abilities to discover effective targeted therapeutics. In an attempt to overcome these limitations, in the current study, we have undertaken a novel approach to drug discovery that exploits systems and network biology at the structural, topological and functional level. Using PTEN, a tumor suppressor, we have applied computational and systems biology approaches and integrated extensive data-mining and biochemical properties of IDP interactions to reach a finer understanding of PTEN function. These results have identified PTEN C-tail IDR and several hub proteins in PTEN-driven molecular network implicated in human diseases as therapeutic targets, enhancing the repertoire of clinically relevant biological targets for pharmacotherapy.

Our derivation and analysis of PTEN primary and secondary interactome indicates that altered levels or interactions of IDPs perturb myriad cellular signaling pathways, leading to pathological conditions including cancer. IDPs have the propensity to aggregate and cause cellular toxicity⁶⁵. Therefore, PTEN as an IDP has evolved a mechanism, wherein, the level of active PTEN, its cellular localization and PTEN-PPIs are regulated via phosphorylation of the C-tail IDR. Furthermore, evolutionarily conserved ELMs and MoRFs that we have identified within the C-tail IDR may play a critical role in orchestrating the formation and function of the PTEN interactome.

Increase in complexity of PPIs is either directed by the number and type of proteins or by increasing the number of interactions required to execute cellular functions⁶⁶. To delineate how PTEN executes myriad functions, we first derived the PTEN primary interactome. We found 40 proteins to directly interact on the PTEN molecule, out of which 25 were associated with the C-tail IDR, consistent with the concept that disorderliness within PTEN executes its myriad functions. To enhance our understanding of PTEN functions in the context of multiple distinct pathways at the systems-level, we delineated functional networks operating within the primary interactome. Our findings showed a high degree of cross-talk between edges, implying that shared regulatory modules, comprised of multiple signaling cascades, operate via PTEN-mediated interaction networks. When these networks are altered, diseases ensue with extreme functional penalties. We also found that the edge proteins were themselves highly disordered indicating that disorderliness within the PTEN primary interactome confers functional versatility. Supporting this notion, 13 proteins that were functionally classified as cancer-related were also highly disordered forming a pliable “PTEN-Cancer Interactome”. Thus, PTEN lesions influence the flexibility of IDP-IDP interactions modulating diverse functions, likely causing cancer.

Owing to the inherent ability of PPIs to be flexible while being complex, specific cellular functions are readily fine-tuned as per the biological demands. Emerging evidence suggests that certain features on the IDRs are recognized as a way of conferring plasticity to protein interaction networks. Consistent with this concept, our data suggest that PTEN, a hub protein containing an IDR, likely utilizes MoRFs and ELMs, gets differentially modified via PTMs, acquiring complementary structures to engage and modulate PPI activity by facilitating adaptive binding to multiple protein partners in many cellular pathways. Thus, our present work provide a novel entrée in targeting intrinsic disorder in PTEN and its interactome to dampen the aberrant PI3K-signaling that drives many cancers. First, imparting order to the PTEN structure may help dampen multiple oncogenic signaling pathways mediated via the 16 hub proteins identified in the present study, by limiting their affinity for PPIs. Second, targeting intrinsic disorder in PTEN and its interactome can become an adjunctive or alternative approach to the use of various kinase inhibitors, which are toxic and have many off-target effects when used to mitigate the aberrant hyperactivation of PI3K/AKT/mTOR oncogenic signaling pathway. Taken together, the present findings provide a novel entrée to design strategies for drug discovery and may become a logical intervention in the pharmacotherapy of cancer and other PTEN-associated disease treatment modalities.

Methods

Disorder analysis

Disorder analysis for PTEN, its primary interactome, secondary interactome and kinases that phosphorylate it were performed using the PONDR-FIT software²². The software assigns a disorder score to each amino acid of the protein. Residues with disorder scores > 0.5 were considered to be disordered. For the PTEN primary interactome, proteins having long disordered regions (i.e a stretch of 30 or more contiguous disordered residues) are considered to be disordered. Percent disorderliness for each protein in the primary interactome is calculated as [(No. of disordered residues/Total no. of amino acids in the protein)*100]. A plot of percent disorderliness is part of Figure 2. For kinases that phosphorylate PTEN, those having long disordered regions (i.e a stretch of 30 or more contiguous disordered residues) are considered to be disordered. The exact residues that constitute the kinase domain were obtained from UniProtKB (http://www.uniprot.org/).

Compositional analysis

Compositional Analysis for PTEN was carried out using the Compositional Profiler Tool²⁴. Comparative analysis is performed for full-length PTEN, its ordered and disordered regions respectively. The analysis makes use of PDB Select 25 and DisProt as a database for ordered and disordered proteins respectively. Any change in amino acid levels for the query protein (i.e enrichment or depletion) over the average value (obtained from the databases) is expressed as (C-C_order)/C_order . C is the level of a particular amino acid in the query protein, which in this case is full-length PTEN, its ordered domain and the intrinsically disordered PTEN tail. C_order corresponds to the level of the same amino acid obtained from a database of ordered proteins (PDB Select 25).A similar profile for typical IDPs is obtained using the DisProt database.

Further, a comparative compositional analysis was performed for the disordered and ordered regions of PTEN. Percentage frequency of a specific class of residues (i.e hydrophobic, polar, aromatic, structure breaking, cysteine and asparagine) is calculated for the ordered and disordered regions respectively. The percentage frequency for the ordered region is calculated as [(No. of a given class of residues in the ordered region/Total number of amino acids in the ordered region)*100]. Similarly, the percentage frequencies are calculated for the disordered region.

Mutational analysis

Mutation data for the PTEN protein was compiled from Sanger Institute Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC), Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD), cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics and the Roche Cancer Genome Database (RCGDB). The number of observed mutations at every amino acid position is determined.

In order to correlate the mutations in PTEN with its amino acid composition, we calculated the ratio of mutations in the different classes of residues used to define IDRs (hydrophobic, polar, aromatic, structure breaking, cysteine and asparagine) in the disordered vs ordered region. The ratio is calculated as:

Where, Rd is calculated as:

Similarly, Ro is calculated as:

Sequence alignments for PTEN and the PTEN C-tail interacting proteins

FASTA sequences for PTEN and PTEN C-tail interacting proteins in various animal species was retrieved from UniProtKB. Sequence alignments were performed using Clustal Omega tool (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/msa/clustalo/).

Derivation of primary and secondary interactomes and network analysis

The PTEN primary interactome was compiled using manual data curation and various softwares including Database of Interacting Proteins (DIP), Interologous Interaction (I2D) Database, InnateDB, IntAct, MatrixDB, The Molecular INTeraction Database (MINT), Molcon, The Microbial Protein Interaction Database (MPID), Uniprot, Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI). The PTEN primary interactome is divided into the mapped and unmapped categories, those proteins that interact with known regions of PTEN are classified as “mapped proteins” whereas those with uncharacterized or computationally predicted interactions are termed as “unmapped proteins”. The PTEN secondary interactome was compiled using various softwares listed above. Network Analysis for the PTEN primary interactome was performed using the Metacore software suite (GeneGo) using PTEN as the node.

Thirteen cancer-related proteins in the PTEN primary interactome were identified by functional enrichment analysis done using the IPA software (Ingenuity® Systems, www.ingenuity.com).

Subsequent network analysis is performed using the IPA software (Ingenuity® Systems, www.ingenuity.com) and Transcriptome Browser⁶⁷.

Deriving the PTEN associated cancer network

The 16 hubs that were predicted to be cancer related hubs were compared with the human cancer associated gene list⁴³. Seven potential cancer associated hubs were identified from the cancer-associated gene list containing 2128 genes. A PTEN centric cancer network was derived from these seven genes as potential hubs using the human signaling network^43,44,45,46. The human signaling network contains ~6,300 proteins and ~63,000 signaling relations. In order to make the network PTEN-centric, we added the PTEN protein-protein interaction data to the original human signaling network. The PTEN associated network was obtained from this updated data set by selecting all the links associated with PTEN and the seven potential cancer associated hubs. The network was visualized using Cytoscape. Network analysis was performed to identify topologically significant hubs using the Network Analysis Plug in tool.

MoRF and ELM prediction

The MoRFPred algorithm⁴⁸ was used to identify MoRF regions within the PTEN protein while the ELM software⁵⁰ was used to scan the PTEN protein for annotated ELMs.

References

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by American Heart Association Grant. SDG-155-N (V.D.), Moffitt Cancer Center Lung SPORE Career Development grant (V.D.) and by the Program of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the "Molecular and Cellular Biology" (V.N.U.). The authors would like to thank Dr Robert Deschenes for helpful discussions and Jaymin Kathiriya for assistance with the sequence alignments.

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Malaney Prerna and Pathak Ravi Ramesh contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Morsani College of Medicine,
Prerna Malaney, Ravi Ramesh Pathak & Vrushank Davé
Department of Molecular Oncology, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute,
Vrushank Davé
Department of Molecular Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 33612, USA
Bin Xue & Vladimir N. Uversky
USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Research Institute, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 33612, USA
Vladimir N. Uversky
Institute for Biological Instrumentation, Russian Academy of Sciences, 142290, Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia
Vladimir N. Uversky

Authors

Prerna Malaney
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Ravi Ramesh Pathak
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Bin Xue
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Vladimir N. Uversky
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Vrushank Davé
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Contributions

P.M. analyzed the properties of PTEN IDR, derived the PTEN primary interactomes and performed the sequence alignments. R.R.P. performed network analysis and obtained the PTEN secondary interactome. P.M. and R.R.P. identified ELMs and MoRFs in PTEN. B.X. and V.N.U. performed the disorder analysis and obtained amino acid composition profile of the PTEN molecule. The project was conceived and designed by V.D. and written by V.D. and P.M. with input from all authors.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Malaney, P., Pathak, R., Xue, B. et al. Intrinsic Disorder in PTEN and its Interactome Confers Structural Plasticity and Functional Versatility. Sci Rep 3, 2035 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep02035

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Received: 11 March 2013
Accepted: 03 June 2013
Published: 20 June 2013
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/srep02035

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