Charge-density analysis of a protein structure at subatomic resolution: the human aldose reductase case

The valence electron density of the protein human aldose reductase was analyzed at 0.66 Å resolution. The methodo­logical developments in the software MoPro to adapt standard charge-density techniques from small molecules to macromolecular structures are described. The deformation electron density visible in initial residual Fourier difference maps was significantly enhanced after high-order refinement. The protein structure was refined after transfer of the experimental library multipolar atom model (ELMAM). The effects on the crystallographic statistics, on the atomic thermal displacement parameters and on the structure stereochemistry are analyzed. Constrained refinements of the transferred valence populations P_val and multipoles P_lm were performed against the X-ray diffraction data on a selected substructure of the protein with low thermal motion. The resulting charge densities are of good quality, especially for chemical groups with many copies present in the polypeptide chain. To check the effect of the starting point on the result of the constrained multipolar refinement, the same charge-density refinement strategy was applied but using an initial neutral spherical atom model, i.e. without transfer from the ELMAM library. The best starting point for a protein multipolar refinement is the structure with the electron density transferred from the database. This can be assessed by the crystallographic statistical indices, including R_free, and the quality of the static deformation electron-density maps, notably on the oxygen electron lone pairs. The analysis of the main-chain bond lengths suggests that stereochemical dictionaries would benefit from a revision based on recently determined un­restrained atomic resolution protein structures.