scholarly journals Resolving the Dynamic Non-Covalent Interaction inside Membrane Protein Channel by Single-Molecule Interaction Spectrum

Author(s):  
Meng-Yin Li ◽  
Yi-Lun Ying ◽  
Xi-Xin Fu ◽  
Jie Yu ◽  
Shao-Chuang Liu ◽  
...  

Millions of years of evolution have produced membrane protein channels capable of efficiently moving ions across the cell membrane. The underlying fundamental mechanisms that facilitate these actions greatly contribute to the weak non-covalent interactions. However, uncovering these dynamic interactions and its synergic network effects still remains challenging in both experimental techniques and molecule dynamics (MD) simulations. Here, we present a rational strategy that combines MD simulations and frequency-energy spectroscopy to identify and quantify the role of non-covalent interactions in carrier transport through membrane protein channels, as encoded in traditional single channel recording or ionic current. We employed wild-type aerolysin transporting of methylcytosine and cytosine as a model to explore the dynamic ionic signatures with non-stationary and non-linear frequency analysis. Our data illuminate that methylcytosine experiences strong non-covalent interactions with the aerolysin nanopore at Region 1 around R220 than cytosine, which produces characteristic frequency-energy spectra. Furthermore, we experimentally validate the obtained hypothesis from frequency-energy spectra by designing single-site mutation of K238G which creates significantly enhanced non-covalent interactions for the recognition of methylcytosine. The frequency-energy spectrum of ions flowing inside membrane channels constitutes a single-molecule interaction spectrum, which bridges the gap between traditional ionic current recording and the MD simulations, facilitating the qualitative and quantitive description of the non-covalent interactions inside membrane channels.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meng-Yin Li ◽  
Yi-Lun Ying ◽  
Xi-Xin Fu ◽  
Jie Yu ◽  
Shao-Chuang Liu ◽  
...  

Millions of years of evolution have produced membrane protein channels capable of efficiently moving ions across the cell membrane. The underlying fundamental mechanisms that facilitate these actions greatly contribute to the weak non-covalent interactions. However, uncovering these dynamic interactions and its synergic network effects still remains challenging in both experimental techniques and molecule dynamics (MD) simulations. Here, we present a rational strategy that combines MD simulations and frequency-energy spectroscopy to identify and quantify the role of non-covalent interactions in carrier transport through membrane protein channels, as encoded in traditional single channel recording or ionic current. We employed wild-type aerolysin transporting of methylcytosine and cytosine as a model to explore the dynamic ionic signatures with non-stationary and non-linear frequency analysis. Our data illuminate that methylcytosine experiences strong non-covalent interactions with the aerolysin nanopore at Region 1 around R220 than cytosine, which produces characteristic frequency-energy spectra. Furthermore, we experimentally validate the obtained hypothesis from frequency-energy spectra by designing single-site mutation of K238G which creates significantly enhanced non-covalent interactions for the recognition of methylcytosine. The frequency-energy spectrum of ions flowing inside membrane channels constitutes a single-molecule interaction spectrum, which bridges the gap between traditional ionic current recording and the MD simulations, facilitating the qualitative and quantitive description of the non-covalent interactions inside membrane channels.


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (24) ◽  
pp. 7598
Author(s):  
Markus Koch ◽  
Marina Saphiannikova ◽  
Olga Guskova

We present a simulation study of supramolecular aggregates formed by three-arm azobenzene (Azo) stars with a benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxamide (BTA) core in water. Previous experimental works by other research groups demonstrate that such Azo stars assemble into needle-like structures with light-responsive properties. Disregarding the response to light, we intend to characterize the equilibrium state of this system on the molecular scale. In particular, we aim to develop a thorough understanding of the binding mechanism between the molecules and analyze the structural properties of columnar stacks of Azo stars. Our study employs fully atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to model pre-assembled aggregates with various sizes and arrangements in water. In our detailed approach, we decompose the binding energies of the aggregates into the contributions due to the different types of non-covalent interactions and the contributions of the functional groups in the Azo stars. Initially, we investigate the origin and strength of the non-covalent interactions within a stacked dimer. Based on these findings, three arrangements of longer columnar stacks are prepared and equilibrated. We confirm that the binding energies of the stacks are mainly composed of π–π interactions between the conjugated parts of the molecules and hydrogen bonds formed between the stacked BTA cores. Our study quantifies the strength of these interactions and shows that the π–π interactions, especially between the Azo moieties, dominate the binding energies. We clarify that hydrogen bonds, which are predominant in BTA stacks, have only secondary energetic contributions in stacks of Azo stars but remain necessary stabilizers. Both types of interactions, π–π stacking and H-bonds, are required to maintain the columnar arrangement of the aggregates.


PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e5998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastián Contreras-Riquelme ◽  
Jose-Antonio Garate ◽  
Tomas Perez-Acle ◽  
Alberto J.M. Martin

Protein structure is not static; residues undergo conformational rearrangements and, in doing so, create, stabilize or break non-covalent interactions. Molecular dynamics (MD) is a technique used to simulate these movements with atomic resolution. However, given the data-intensive nature of the technique, gathering relevant information from MD simulations is a complex and time consuming process requiring several computational tools to perform these analyses. Among different approaches, the study of residue interaction networks (RINs) has proven to facilitate the study of protein structures. In a RIN, nodes represent amino-acid residues and the connections between them depict non-covalent interactions. Here, we describe residue interaction networks in protein molecular dynamics (RIP-MD), a visual molecular dynamics (VMD) plugin to facilitate the study of RINs using trajectories obtained from MD simulations of proteins. Our software generates RINs from MD trajectory files. The non-covalent interactions defined by RIP-MD include H-bonds, salt bridges, VdWs, cation-π, π–π, Arginine–Arginine, and Coulomb interactions. In addition, RIP-MD also computes interactions based on distances between Cαs and disulfide bridges. The results of the analysis are shown in an user friendly interface. Moreover, the user can take advantage of the VMD visualization capacities, whereby through some effortless steps, it is possible to select and visualize interactions described for a single, several or all residues in a MD trajectory. Network and descriptive table files are also generated, allowing their further study in other specialized platforms. Our method was written in python in a parallelized fashion. This characteristic allows the analysis of large systems impossible to handle otherwise. RIP-MD is available at http://www.dlab.cl/ripmd.


2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (3) ◽  
pp. 468a
Author(s):  
Meng-Yin Li ◽  
Yi-Lun Ying ◽  
Wei Tong ◽  
Yong-Jing Wan ◽  
Yi-Tao Long

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priyesh Mohanty ◽  
Kiran Sankar Chatterjee ◽  
Ranabir Das

Cullin-RING ligases (CRLs) are a significant subset of Ubiquitin E3 ligases that regulate multiple cellular substrates involved in innate immunity, cytoskeleton modeling, and cell cycle. The glutamine deamidase Cycle inhibitory factor (Cif) from enteric bacteria inactivates CRLs to modulate these processes in the host cell. The covalent attachment of a Ubiquitin-like protein NEDD8 catalytically activates CRLs by driving conformational changes in the Cullin C-terminal domain (CTD). NEDDylation results in a shift from a compact to an open CTD conformation through non-covalent interactions between NEDD8 and the WHB subdomain of CTD, eliminating the latter’s inhibitory interactions with the RING E3 ligase-Rbx1/2. It is unknown whether the non-covalent interactions are sufficient to stabilize Cullin CTD’s catalytic conformation. We studied the dynamics of Cullin-CTD in the presence and absence of NEDD8 using atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We uncovered that NEDD8 engages in non-covalent interactions with 4HB/αβ subdomains in Cullin-CTD to promote open conformations. Cif deamidates glutamine 40 in NEDD8 to inhibit the conformational change in CRLs by an unknown mechanism. We investigated the effect of glutamine deamidation on NEDD8 and its interaction with the WHB subdomain post-NEDDylation using MD simulations and NMR spectroscopy. Our results suggest that deamidation creates a new intramolecular salt bridge in NEDD8 to destabilize the NEDD8/WHB complex and reduce CRL activity.


Author(s):  
Cristobal Perez ◽  
Melanie Schnell ◽  
Peter Schreiner ◽  
Norbert Mitzel ◽  
Yury Vishnevskiy ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Vasquez ◽  
Agnieszka Dybala-Defratyka

<p></p><p>Very often in order to understand physical and chemical processes taking place among several phases fractionation of naturally abundant isotopes is monitored. Its measurement can be accompanied by theoretical determination to provide a more insightful interpretation of observed phenomena. Predictions are challenging due to the complexity of the effects involved in fractionation such as solvent effects and non-covalent interactions governing the behavior of the system which results in the necessity of using large models of those systems. This is sometimes a bottleneck and limits the theoretical description to only a few methods.<br> In this work vapour pressure isotope effects on evaporation from various organic solvents (ethanol, bromobenzene, dibromomethane, and trichloromethane) in the pure phase are estimated by combining force field or self-consistent charge density-functional tight-binding (SCC-DFTB) atomistic simulations with path integral principle. Furthermore, the recently developed Suzuki-Chin path integral is tested. In general, isotope effects are predicted qualitatively for most of the cases, however, the distinction between position-specific isotope effects observed for ethanol was only reproduced by SCC-DFTB, which indicates the importance of using non-harmonic bond approximations.<br> Energy decomposition analysis performed using the symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) revealed sometimes quite substantial differences in interaction energy depending on whether the studied system was treated classically or quantum mechanically. Those observed differences might be the source of different magnitudes of isotope effects predicted using these two different levels of theory which is of special importance for the systems governed by non-covalent interactions.</p><br><p></p>


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