High-resolution double vision of the archetypal protein tyrosine phosphatase

Protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) plays important roles in cellular homeostasis and is a highly validated therapeutic target for multiple human ailments including diabetes, obesity, and breast cancer. However, much remains to be learned about how conformational changes may convey information through the structure of PTP1B to enable allosteric regulation by ligands or functional responses to mutations. High-resolution X-ray crystallography can offer unique windows into protein conformational ensembles, but comparison of even high-resolution structures is often complicated by differences between datasets including non-isomorphism. Here we present the highest-resolution crystal structure of apo wildtype (WT) PTP1B to date, out of [~]350 total PTP1B structures in the PDB. Our structure is in a crystal form that is rare for PTP1B, with two unique copies of the protein that exhibit distinct patterns of conformational heterogeneity, allowing a controlled comparison of local disorder across the two chains within the same asymmetric unit. We interrogate the conformational differences between these chains in our apo structure, and between several recently reported high-resolution ligand-bound structures. We also examine electron density maps in a high-resolution structure of a recently reported activating double mutant, and discover unmodeled alternate conformations in the mutant structure that coincide with regions of enhanced conformational heterogeneity in our new WT structure. Our results validate the notion that these mutations operate by enhancing local dynamics, and suggest a latent susceptibility to such changes in the WT enzyme. Together, our new data and analysis provide a freshly detailed view of the conformational ensemble of PTP1B, and highlight the utility of high-resolution crystallography for elucidating conformational heterogeneity with potential relevance for function.