Collective residue interactions in trimer complexes of SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins analyzed by fragment molecular orbital method

In large biomolecular systems such as protein complexes, there are huge numbers of combinations of inter-residue interactions whose comprehensive analyses are often beyond the intuitive processing by researchers. Here we propose a computational method to allow for a systematic analysis of these interactions based on the fragment molecular orbital calculations, in which the inter-fragment interaction energies are comprehensively processed by the singular value decomposition. For a trimer complex of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, three-body interactions among residues belonging to three chains are analyzed to elicit a small number of essential interaction modes or networks crucial for the structural stability of complex.

Hot Spot Analysis of YAP-TEAD Protein-Protein Interaction Using the Fragment Molecular Orbital Method and Its Application for Inhibitor Discovery

The Hippo pathway is an important signaling pathway modulating growth control and cancer cell proliferation. Dysregulation of the Hippo pathway is a common feature of several types of cancer cells. The modulation of the interaction between yes-associated protein (YAP) and transcriptional enhancer associated domain (TEAD) in the Hippo pathway is considered an attractive target for cancer therapeutic development, although the inhibition of PPI is a challenging task. In order to investigate the hot spots of the YAP and TEAD1 interacting complex, an ab initio Fragment Molecular Orbital (FMO) method was introduced. With the hot spots, pharmacophores for the inhibitor design were constructed, then virtual screening was performed to an in-house library. Next, we performed molecular docking simulations and FMO calculations for screening results to study the binding modes and affinities between PPI inhibitors and TEAD1. As a result of the virtual screening, three compounds were selected as virtual hit compounds. In order to confirm their biological activities, cellular (luciferase activity, proximity ligation assay and wound healing assay in A375 cells, qRT-PCR in HEK 293T cells) and biophysical assays (surface plasmon resonance assays) were performed. Based on the findings of the study, we propose a novel PPI inhibitor BY03 and demonstrate a profitable strategy to analyze YAP–TEAD PPI and discover novel PPI inhibitors.