A silent H-bond can be mutationally activated for high-affinity interaction of BMP-2 and activin type IIB receptor

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are key regulators in the embryonic development and postnatal tissue homeostasis in all animals. Loss of function or dysregulation of BMPs

Binding specificity of BMP-2 for its three type II receptors BMPR-II, Act-RII and ActR-IIB is encoded on single amino acid level. Exchange of only one or two residues results in BMP-2 variants with a dramatically altered type II receptor specificity profile, possibly allowing construction of BMP-2 variants that address a single type II receptor. The structure-/function studies presented here revealed a new mechanism, in which the energy contribution of a conserved H-bond is modulated by surrounding intramolecular interactions to achieve a switch between low- and high-affinity binding.

Here we present the high-resolution structures of the ternary complexes of wildtype and a variant BMP-2 bound to its high-affinity type I receptor BMPR-IA and its low-affinity type II receptor ActR-IIB and compare them with the known structures of binary and ternary ligand-receptor complexes of BMP-2. In contrast to activin or TGF-beta3 no changes in the dimer architecture of the BMP-2 ligand occur upon complex formation. Functional analysis of the ActR-IIB binding epitope shows that hydrophobic interactions dominate in low-affinity binding of BMPs; polar interactions contribute only little to binding affinity. However, a conserved H-bond in the center of the type II ligand-receptor interface, which does not contribute to binding in the BMP-2 - ActR-IIB interaction can be mutationally activated resulting in a BMP-2 variant with high-affinity for ActR-IIB. Further mutagenesis studies were performed to elucidate the binding mechanism allowing us to construct BMP-2 variants with defined type II receptor binding properties.