The absolute structural requirement for a proline in the P3 '-position of Bowman-Birk protease inhibitors is surmounted in the minimized SFTI-1 scaffold

SFTI-1 is a small cyclic peptide from sunflower seeds that is one of the most potent trypsin inhibitors of any naturally occurring peptide and is related to the Bowman-Birk family of inhibitors (BBIs). BBIs are involved in the defense mechanisms of plants and also have potential as cancer chemopreventive agents. At only 14 amino acids in size, SFTI-1 is thought to be a highly optimized scaffold of the BBI active site region, and thus it is of interest to examine its important structural and functional features. In this study, a suite of 12 alanine mutants of SFTI-1 has been synthesized, and their structures and activities have been determined. SFTI-1 incorporates a binding loop that is clasped together with a disulfide bond and a secondary peptide loop making up the circular backbone. We show here that the secondary loop stabilizes the binding loop to the consequences of sequence variations. In particular, full-length BBIs have a conserved cis-proline that has been shown previously to be required for well defined structure and potent activity, but we show here that the SFTI-1 scaffold can accommodate mutation of this residue and still have a well defined native-like conformation and nanomolar activity in inhibiting trypsin. Among the Ala mutants, the most significant structural perturbation occurred when Asp(14) was mutated, and it appears that this residue is important in stabilizing the trans peptide bond preceding Pro(13) and is thus a key residue in maintaining the highly constrained structure of SFTI-1. This aspartic acid residue is thought to be involved in the cyclization mechanism associated with excision of SFTI-1 from its 58-amino acid precursor. Overall, this mutational analysis of SFTI-1 clearly defines the optimized nature of the SFTI-1 scaffold and demonstrates the importance of the secondary loop in maintaining the active conformation of the binding loop.