scholarly journals Protonation States of the Key Active Site Residues and Structural Dynamics of theglmSRiboswitch As Revealed by Molecular Dynamics

2010 ◽  
Vol 114 (26) ◽  
pp. 8701-8712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Banáš ◽  
Nils G. Walter ◽  
Jiří Šponer ◽  
Michal Otyepka
2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (52) ◽  
pp. E12192-E12200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haoran Yu ◽  
Paul A. Dalby

The directed evolution of enzymes for improved activity or substrate specificity commonly leads to a trade-off in stability. We have identified an activity–stability trade-off and a loss in unfolding cooperativity for a variant (3M) of Escherichia coli transketolase (TK) engineered to accept aromatic substrates. Molecular dynamics simulations of 3M revealed increased flexibility in several interconnected active-site regions that also form part of the dimer interface. Mutating the newly flexible active-site residues to regain stability risked losing the new activity. We hypothesized that stabilizing mutations could be targeted to residues outside of the active site, whose dynamics were correlated with the newly flexible active-site residues. We previously stabilized WT TK by targeting mutations to highly flexible regions. These regions were much less flexible in 3M and would not have been selected a priori as targets using the same strategy based on flexibility alone. However, their dynamics were highly correlated with the newly flexible active-site regions of 3M. Introducing the previous mutations into 3M reestablished the WT level of stability and unfolding cooperativity, giving a 10.8-fold improved half-life at 55 °C, and increased midpoint and aggregation onset temperatures by 3 °C and 4.3 °C, respectively. Even the activity toward aromatic aldehydes increased up to threefold. Molecular dynamics simulations confirmed that the mutations rigidified the active-site via the correlated network. This work provides insights into the impact of rigidifying mutations within highly correlated dynamic networks that could also be useful for developing improved computational protein engineering strategies.


2001 ◽  
Vol 353 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Istvan J. ENYEDY ◽  
Ildiko M. KOVACH ◽  
Akos BENCSURA

The role of active-site residues in the dealkylation reaction in the PSCS diastereomer of 2-(3,3-dimethylbutyl)methylphosphonofluoridate (soman)-inhibited Torpedo californicaacetylcholinesterase (AChE) was investigated by full-scale molecular dynamics simulations using CHARMM: > 400ps equilibration was followed by 150–200ps production runs with the fully solvated tetracoordinate phosphonate adduct of the wild-type, Trp84Ala and Gly199Gln mutants of AChE. Parallel simulations were carried out with the tetrahedral intermediate formed between serine-200 Oγ of AChE and acetylcholine. We found that the NεH in histidine H+-440 is positioned to protonate the oxygen in choline and thus promote its departure. In contrast, NεH in histidine H+-440 is not aligned for a favourable proton transfer to the pinacolyl O to promote dealkylation, but electrostatic stabilization by histidine H+-440 of the developing anion on the phosphonate monoester occurs. Destabilizing interactions between residues and the alkyl fragment of the inhibitor enforce methyl migration from Cβ to Cα concerted with C—O bond breaking in soman-inhibited AChE. Tryptophan-84, phenyalanine-331 and glutamic acid-199 are within 3.7–3.9 Å (1 Å=10-10 m) from a methyl group in Cβ, 4.5–5.1 Å from Cβ and 4.8–5.8 Å from Cα, and can better stabilize the developing carbenium ion on Cβ than on Cα. The Trp84Ala mutation eliminates interactions between the incipient carbenium ion and the indole ring, but also reduces its interactions with phenylalanine-331 and aspartic acid-72. Tyrosine-130 promotes dealkylation by interacting with the indole ring of tryptophan-84. Glutamic acid-443 can influence the orientation of active-site residues through tyrosine-421, tyrosine-442 and histidine-440 in soman-inhibited AChE, and thus facilitate dealkylation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (06) ◽  
pp. 1750026 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Subasri ◽  
Santosh Kumar Chaudhary ◽  
K. Sekar ◽  
Manish Kesherwani ◽  
D. Velmurugan

Fumarase catalyzes the reversible, stereospecific hydration/dehydration of fumarate to L-malate during the Kreb’s cycle. In the crystal structure of the tetrameric fumarase, it was found that some of the active site residues S145, T147, N188 G364 and H235 had water-mediated hydrogen bonding interactions with pyromellitic acid and citrate which help to the protonation state for the conversion of fumarate to malate. When His 235 is mutated with Asn (H235N), water-mediated interactions were lost due to the shifting of active site water molecule by 0.7 Å away. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were also carried out by NAMD and analyzed using Assisted Model Building with Energy Refinement (AMBER) program to better understand the conformational stability and other aspects during the binding of pyromellitic acid and citrate with native and mutant FH. The role of hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions was also analyzed. The present study confirms that the H235N mutation has a major effect on the catalytic activity of fumarase which is evident from the biochemical studies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santosh Kumar Chaudhary ◽  
Jeyaraman Jeyakanthan ◽  
Kanagaraj Sekar

Thymidylate kinase is an important enzyme in DNA synthesis. It catalyzes the conversion of thymidine monophosphate to thymidine diphosphate, with ATP as the preferred phosphoryl donor, in the presence of Mg2+. In this study, the dynamics of the active site and the communication paths between the substrates, ATP and TMP, are reported for thymidylate kinase fromThermus thermophilus. Conformational changes upon ligand binding and the path for communication between the substrates and the protein are important in understanding the catalytic mechanism of the enzyme. High-resolution X-ray crystal structures of thymidylate kinase in apo and ligand-bound states were solved. This is the first report of structures of binary and ternary complexes of thymidylate kinase with its natural substrates ATP and ATP–TMP, respectively. Distinct conformations of the active-site residues, the P-loop and the LID region observed in the apo and ligand-bound structures revealed that their concerted motion is required for the binding and proper positioning of the substrate TMP. Structural analyses provide an insight into the mode of substrate binding at the active site. The residues involved in communication between the substrates were identified through network analysis using molecular-dynamics simulations. The residues identified showed high sequence conservation across species. Biochemical analyses show that mutations of these residues either resulted in a loss of activity or affected the thermal stability of the protein. Further, molecular-dynamics analyses of mutants suggest that the proper positioning of TMP is important for catalysis. These data also provide an insight into the phosphoryl-transfer mechanism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (17) ◽  
pp. E4071-E4080 ◽  
Author(s):  
Navneet Bung ◽  
Arijit Roy ◽  
Brenden Chen ◽  
Dibyajyoti Das ◽  
Meenakshi Pradhan ◽  
...  

Hydroxymethylbilane synthase (HMBS), the third enzyme in the heme biosynthetic pathway, catalyzes the head-to-tail condensation of four molecules of porphobilinogen (PBG) to form the linear tetrapyrrole 1-hydroxymethylbilane (HMB). Mutations in human HMBS (hHMBS) cause acute intermittent porphyria (AIP), an autosomal-dominant disorder characterized by life-threatening neurovisceral attacks. Although the 3D structure of hHMBS has been reported, the mechanism of the stepwise polymerization of four PBG molecules to form HMB remains unknown. Moreover, the specific roles of each of the critical active-site residues in the stepwise enzymatic mechanism and the dynamic behavior of hHMBS during catalysis have not been investigated. Here, we report atomistic studies of HMB stepwise synthesis by using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, mutagenesis, and in vitro expression analyses. These studies revealed that the hHMBS active-site loop movement and cofactor turn created space for the elongating pyrrole chain. Twenty-seven residues around the active site and water molecules interacted to stabilize the large, negatively charged, elongating polypyrrole. Mutagenesis of these active-site residues altered the binding site, hindered cofactor binding, decreased catalysis, impaired ligand exit, and/or destabilized the enzyme. Based on intermediate stages of chain elongation, R26 and R167 were the strongest candidates for proton transfer to deaminate the incoming PBG molecules. Unbiased random acceleration MD simulations identified R167 as a gatekeeper and facilitator of HMB egress through the space between the enzyme’s domains and the active-site loop. These studies identified the specific active-site residues involved in each step of pyrrole elongation, thereby providing the molecular bases of the active-site mutations causing AIP.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anuradha Pallipurath ◽  
Francesco Civati ◽  
Jonathan Skelton ◽  
Dean Keeble ◽  
Clare Crowley ◽  
...  

X-ray pair distribution function analysis is used with first-principles molecular dynamics simulations to study the co-operative H<sub>2</sub>O binding, structural dynamics and host-guest interactions in the channel hydrate of diflunisal.


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