Faculty Opinions recommendation of General Purpose Water Model Can Improve Atomistic Simulations of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins.

Author(s):  
Pengyu Ren ◽  
Chengwen Liu
Biomolecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 743
Author(s):  
Jianlin Chen ◽  
Xiaorong Liu ◽  
Jianhan Chen

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are over-represented in major disease pathways and have attracted significant interest in understanding if and how they may be targeted using small molecules for therapeutic purposes. While most existing studies have focused on extending the traditional structure-centric drug design strategies and emphasized exploring pre-existing structure features of IDPs for specific binding, several examples have also emerged to suggest that small molecules could achieve specificity in binding IDPs and affect their function through dynamic and transient interactions. These dynamic interactions can modulate the disordered conformational ensemble and often lead to modest compaction to shield functionally important interaction sites. Much work remains to be done on further elucidation of the molecular basis of the dynamic small molecule–IDP interaction and determining how it can be exploited for targeting IDPs in practice. These efforts will rely critically on an integrated experimental and computational framework for disordered protein ensemble characterization. In particular, exciting advances have been made in recent years in enhanced sampling techniques, Graphic Processing Unit (GPU)-computing, and protein force field optimization, which have now allowed rigorous physics-based atomistic simulations to generate reliable structure ensembles for nontrivial IDPs of modest sizes. Such de novo atomistic simulations will play crucial roles in exploring the exciting opportunity of targeting IDPs through dynamic interactions.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joao Victor de Souza Cunha ◽  
Francesc Sabanes Zariquiey ◽  
Agnieszka K. Bronowska

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are molecules without a fixed tertiary structure, exerting crucial roles in cellular signalling, growth and molecular recognition events. Due to their high plasticity, IDPs are very challenging in experimental and computational structural studies. To provide detailed atomic insight in IDPs dynamics governing its functional mechanisms, all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are widely employed. However, the current generalist force fields and solvent models are unable to generate satisfactory ensembles for IDPs when compared to existing experimental data. In this work, we present a new solvation model, denoted as Charge-Augmented 3 Point Water model for Intrinsically-disordered Proteins (CAIPi3P). CAIPi3P has been generated by performing a systematic scanning of atomic partial charges assigned to the widely popular molecular scaffold of the three-point TIP3P water model. We found that explicit solvent MD simulations employing CAIPi3P solvation considerably improved the SAXS scattering profiles for three different IDPs. Not surprisingly, this improvement was further enhanced by using CAIPi3P water in combination with the protein force field parametrized for IDPs. We have also demonstrated applicability of CAIPi3P to molecular systems containing structured as well as intrinsically disordered regions/domains. Our results highlight the crucial importance of solvent effects for generating molecular ensembles of IDPs which reproduce the experimental data available. Hence, we conclude that our newly developed CAIPi3P solvation model is a valuable tool assisting molecular simulations of intrinsically disordered proteins and assessing their molecular dynamics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (17) ◽  
pp. 6166
Author(s):  
Joao V. de Souza ◽  
Francesc Sabanés Zariquiey ◽  
Agnieszka K. Bronowska

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are molecules without a fixed tertiary structure, exerting crucial roles in cellular signalling, growth and molecular recognition events. Due to their high plasticity, IDPs are very challenging in experimental and computational structural studies. To provide detailed atomic insight in IDPs’ dynamics governing their functional mechanisms, all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are widely employed. However, the current generalist force fields and solvent models are unable to generate satisfactory ensembles for IDPs when compared to existing experimental data. In this work, we present a new solvation model, denoted as the Charge-Augmented Three-Point Water Model for Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (CAIPi3P). CAIPi3P has been generated by performing a systematic scan of atomic partial charges assigned to the widely popular molecular scaffold of the three-point TIP3P water model. We found that explicit solvent MD simulations employing CAIPi3P solvation considerably improved the small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) scattering profiles for three different IDPs. Not surprisingly, this improvement was further enhanced by using CAIPi3P water in combination with the protein force field parametrized for IDPs. We also demonstrated the applicability of CAIPi3P to molecular systems containing structured as well as intrinsically disordered regions/domains. Our results highlight the crucial importance of solvent effects for generating molecular ensembles of IDPs which reproduce the experimental data available. Hence, we conclude that our newly developed CAIPi3P solvation model is a valuable tool for molecular simulations of intrinsically disordered proteins and assessing their molecular dynamics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (10) ◽  
pp. E1833-E1839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Soranno ◽  
Andrea Holla ◽  
Fabian Dingfelder ◽  
Daniel Nettels ◽  
Dmitrii E. Makarov ◽  
...  

Internal friction is an important contribution to protein dynamics at all stages along the folding reaction. Even in unfolded and intrinsically disordered proteins, internal friction has a large influence, as demonstrated with several experimental techniques and in simulations. However, these methods probe different facets of internal friction and have been applied to disparate molecular systems, raising questions regarding the compatibility of the results. To obtain an integrated view, we apply here the combination of two complementary experimental techniques, simulations, and theory to the same system: unfolded protein L. We use single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) to measure the global reconfiguration dynamics of the chain, and photoinduced electron transfer (PET), a contact-based method, to quantify the rate of loop formation between two residues. This combination enables us to probe unfolded-state dynamics on different length scales, corresponding to different parts of the intramolecular distance distribution. Both FRET and PET measurements show that internal friction dominates unfolded-state dynamics at low denaturant concentration, and the results are in remarkable agreement with recent large-scale molecular dynamics simulations using a new water model. The simulations indicate that intrachain interactions and dihedral angle rotation correlate with the presence of internal friction, and theoretical models of polymer dynamics provide a framework for interrelating the contribution of internal friction observed in the two types of experiments and in the simulations. The combined results thus provide a coherent and quantitative picture of internal friction in unfolded proteins that could not be attained from the individual techniques.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joao Victor de Souza Cunha ◽  
Francesc Sabanes Zariquiey ◽  
Agnieszka K. Bronowska

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are molecules without a fixed tertiary structure, exerting crucial roles in cellular signalling, growth and molecular recognition events. Due to their high plasticity, IDPs are very challenging in experimental and computational structural studies. To provide detailed atomic insight in IDPs dynamics governing its functional mechanisms, all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are widely employed. However, the current generalist force fields and solvent models are unable to generate satisfactory ensembles for IDPs when compared to existing experimental data. In this work, we present a new solvation model, denoted as Charge-Augmented 3 Point Water model for Intrinsically-disordered Proteins (CAIPi3P). CAIPi3P has been generated by performing a systematic scanning of atomic partial charges assigned to the widely popular molecular scaffold of the three-point TIP3P water model. We found that explicit solvent MD simulations employing CAIPi3P solvation considerably improved the SAXS scattering profiles for three different IDPs. Not surprisingly, this improvement was further enhanced by using CAIPi3P water in combination with the protein force field parametrized for IDPs. We have also demonstrated applicability of CAIPi3P to molecular systems containing structured as well as intrinsically disordered regions/domains. Our results highlight the crucial importance of solvent effects for generating molecular ensembles of IDPs which reproduce the experimental data available. Hence, we conclude that our newly developed CAIPi3P solvation model is a valuable tool assisting molecular simulations of intrinsically disordered proteins and assessing their molecular dynamics.


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