Structural highlights
Disease
FIBA_HUMAN Defects in FGA are a cause of congenital afibrinogenemia (CAFBN) [MIM:202400. This is a rare autosomal recessive disorder characterized by bleeding that varies from mild to severe and by complete absence or extremely low levels of plasma and platelet fibrinogen. Note=The majority of cases of afibrinogenemia are due to truncating mutations. Variations in position Arg-35 (the site of cleavage of fibrinopeptide a by thrombin) leads to alpha-dysfibrinogenemias. Defects in FGA are a cause of amyloidosis type 8 (AMYL8) [MIM:105200; also known as systemic non-neuropathic amyloidosis or Ostertag-type amyloidosis. AMYL8 is a hereditary generalized amyloidosis due to deposition of apolipoprotein A1, fibrinogen and lysozyme amyloids. Viscera are particularly affected. There is no involvement of the nervous system. Clinical features include renal amyloidosis resulting in nephrotic syndrome, arterial hypertension, hepatosplenomegaly, cholestasis, petechial skin rash.[1]
Function
FIBA_HUMAN Fibrinogen has a double function: yielding monomers that polymerize into fibrin and acting as a cofactor in platelet aggregation.
Evolutionary Conservation
Check, as determined by ConSurfDB. You may read the explanation of the method and the full data available from ConSurf.
Publication Abstract from PubMed
"A:a" knob-hole interactions and D:D interfacial interactions are important for fibrin polymerization. Previous studies with recombinant gammaN308K fibrinogen, a substitution at the D:D interface, showed impaired polymerization. We examined the molecular basis for this loss of function by solving the crystal structure of gammaN308K fragment D. In contrast to previous fragment D crystals, the gammaN308K crystals belonged to a tetragonal space group with unusually long unit cell (a = b = 95, c = 448.3 A). Alignment of the normal and gammaN308K structures showed the global structure of the variant was not changed, and the knob "A" peptide GPRP was bound as usual to hole "a". The substitution introduced an elongated positively charged patch in the D:D region. The structure showed novel, symmetric D:D crystal contacts between gammaN308K molecules, indicating the normal asymmetric D:D interface in fibrin would be unstable in this variant. We examined GPRP binding to gammaN308K in solution by plasmin protection assay. The results showed weaker peptide binding suggesting that "A:a" interactions were altered. We examined fibrin network structures by scanning electron microscopy and found the variant fibers were thicker and more heterogeneous than normal fibers. Considered together our structural and biochemical studies indicate both "A:a" and D:D interactions are weaker. We conclude that stable protofibrils cannot assemble from gammaN308K monomers, leading to impaired polymerization.
Impaired protofibril formation in fibrinogen N308K is due to altered D:D and A:a interactions.,Bowley SR, Okumura N, Lord ST Biochemistry. 2009 Aug 3. PMID:19650644[2]
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
See Also
References
- ↑ Benson MD, Liepnieks J, Uemichi T, Wheeler G, Correa R. Hereditary renal amyloidosis associated with a mutant fibrinogen alpha-chain. Nat Genet. 1993 Mar;3(3):252-5. PMID:8097946 doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng0393-252
- ↑ Bowley SR, Okumura N, Lord ST. Impaired protofibril formation in fibrinogen N308K is due to altered D:D and A:a interactions. Biochemistry. 2009 Aug 3. PMID:19650644 doi:10.1021/bi900239b
