Classical And Quantum Mechanical Simulations Of Condensed Systems And Biomolecules

This work describes the fundamental study of two enzymes of Fe(II)/-KG super family enzymes (TET2 and AlkB) by applying MD and QM/MM approaches, as well as the development of multipolar-polarizable force field (AMOEBA/GEM-DM) for condensed systems (ionic liquids and water). TET2 catalytic activity has been studied extensively to identify the potential source of its substrate preference in three iterative oxidation steps. Our MD results along with some experimental data show that the wild type TET2 active site is shaped to enable higher order oxidation. We showed that the scaffold stablished by Y1902 and T1372 is required for iterative oxidation. The mutation of these residues perturbs the alignment of the substrate in the active site, resulting in “5hmC-stalling” phenotype in some of the mutants. We provided more details on 5hmC to 5fC oxidation mechanism for wild type and one of the “5hmC-stallling” mutants (E mutant). We showed that 5hmC oxidizes to 5fC in the wild type via three steps. The first step is the hydrogen atom abstraction from hydroxyl group of 5hmC, while the second hydrogen is transferred from methylene group of 5hmC through the third transition state as a proton. Our results suggest that the oxidation in E mutant is kinetically unfavorable due to its high barrier energy. Many analyses have been performed to qualitatively describe our results and we believed our results can be used as a guide for other researchers. In addition, two MD approaches (explicit ligand sampling and WHAM) are used to study the oxygen molecule diffusion into the active site of AlkB. Our results showed that there are two possible channels for oxygen diffusion, however, diffusion through one of them is thermodynamically favorable. We also applied multipolar-polarizable force field to describe the oxygen diffusion along the preferred tunnel. We showed that the polarizable force field can describe the behavior of the highly polarizable systems accurately. We also developed a new multipolar-polarizable force field (AMOEBA/GEM-DM) to calculate the properties of imidazolium- and pyrrolidinium- based ionic liquids and water in a range of temperature. Our results agree well with the experimental data. The good agreement between our results and experimental data is because our new parameters provide an accurate description of non-bonded interactions. We fit all the non-bonded parameters against QM. We use the multipoles extracted from fitted electron densities (GEM) and we consider both inter- and intra-molecular polarization. We believe this method can accurately calculate the properties of condensed systems and can be helpful for designing new systems such as electrolytes

Developing and validating Fuzzy-Border continuum solvation model with POlarizable Simulations Second order Interaction Model (POSSIM) force field for proteins

The accurate, fast and low cost computational tools are indispensable for studying the structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules in aqueous solution. The goal of this thesis is development and validation of continuum Fuzzy-Border (FB) solvation model to work with the Polarizable Simulations Second-order Interaction Model (POSSIM) force field for proteins developed by Professor G A Kaminski. The implicit FB model has advantages over the popularly used Poisson Boltzmann (PB) solvation model. The FB continuum model attenuates the noise and convergence issues commonly present in numerical treatments of the PB model by employing fixed position cubic grid to compute interactions. It also uses either second or first-order approximation for the solvent polarization which is similar to the second-order explicit polarization applied in POSSIM force field. The FB model was first developed and parameterized with nonpolarizable OPLS-AA force field for small molecules which are not only important in themselves but also building blocks of proteins and peptide side chains. The hydration parameters are fitted to reproduce the experimental or quantum mechanical hydration energies of the molecules with the overall average unsigned error of ca. 0.076kcal/mol. It was further validated by computing the absolute pKa values of 11 substituted phenols with the average unsigned error of 0.41pH units in comparison with the quantum mechanical error of 0.38pH units for this set of molecules. There was a good transferability of hydration parameters and the results were produced only with fitting of the specific atoms to the hydration energy and pKa targets. This clearly demonstrates the numerical and physical basis of the model is good enough and with proper fitting can reproduce the acidity constants for other systems as well. After the successful development of FB model with the fixed charges OPLS-AA force field, it was expanded to permit simulations with Polarizable Simulations Second-order Interaction Model (POSSIM) force field. The hydration parameters of the small molecules representing analogues of protein side chains were fitted to their solvation energies at 298.15K with an average error of ca.0.136kcal/mol. Second, the resulting parameters were used to reproduce the pKa values of the reference systems and the carboxylic (Asp7, Glu10, Glu19, Asp27 and Glu43) and basic residues (Lys13, Lys29, Lys34, His52 and Lys55) of the turkey ovomucoid third domain (OMTKY3) protein. The overall average unsigned error in the pKa values of the acid residues was found to be 0.37pH units and the basic residues was 0.38 pH units compared to 0.58pH units and 0.72 pH units calculated previously using polarizable force field (PFF) and Poisson Boltzmann formalism (PBF) continuum solvation model. These results are produced with fitting of specific atoms of the reference systems and carboxylic and basic residues of the OMTKY3 protein. Since FB model has produced improved pKa shifts of carboxylic residues and basic protein residues in OMTKY3 protein compared to PBF/PFF, it suggests the methodology of first-order FB continuum solvation model works well in such calculations. In this study the importance of explicit treatment of the electrostatic polarization in calculating pKa of both acid and basic protein residues is also emphasized. Moreover, the presented results demonstrate not only the consistently good degree of accuracy of protein pKa calculations with the second-degree POSSIM approximation of the polarizable calculations and the first-order approximation used in the Fuzzy-Border model for the continuum solvation energy, but also a high degree of transferability of both the POSSIM and continuum solvent Fuzzy Border parameters. Therefore, the FB model of solvation combined with the POSSIM force field can be successfully applied to study the protein and protein-ligand systems in water

Fast Polarizable Force Field Computation in Biomolecular Simulations

Polarizable force fields are considered to be the single most significant development in the next-generation force fields used in biomolecular simulations. The self-consistent computation of induced atomic dipoles in a polarizable force field is expensive due to the cost of solving a large dense linear system at each timestep in molecular dynamics simulations. Methods are developed that reduce the cost of computing the electrostatic energy and force of a polarizable model from about 7.5 times the cost of computing those of a non-polarizable model to less than twice the cost. The reduction is achieved by an efficient implementation of the particle--mesh Ewald method, an accurate and robust predictor based on least squares fitting, and two non-stationary iterative methods whose fast convergence is empowered by a simple preconditioner. Furthermore, with these methods, we show that the self-consistent approach with a larger timestep is faster than the extended Lagrangian approach. The use of dipole moments from previous timesteps to calculate an accurate initial guess for iterative methods leads to an energy drift and compromises the volume-preserving property of the integration. Iterative methods with zero initial guess do not lead to perceptible energy drift if a reasonably strict convergence criterion for the iteration is imposed and the numerical integrator is volume-preserving. The approximate solution computed by an iterative method ruins the symplectic property of the integrator. To address this problem, a non-iterative method has been developed based on an approximation to the electrostatic potential energy and has been efficiently implemented. The method preserves the symplecticness of the integrator and is suitable for long time simulations. The research will help polarizable force fields modeling and computation to become a routine part of molecular dynamics simulations for biomolecular systems

Inter- and intramolecular potential for the N-formylglycinamide-water system. A comparison between theoretical modeling and empirical force fields

An intramolecular NEMO potential is presented for the N-formylglycinamide molecule together with an intermolecular potential for the N-formylglycinamide-water system. The intramolecular N-formylglycinamide potential can be used as a building block for the backbone of polypeptides and proteins. Two intramolecular minima have been obtained. One, denoted as C5, is stabilized by a hydrogen bonded five member ring, and the other, denoted as C7, corresponds to a seven membered ring. The interaction between one water molecule and the N-formylglycinamide system is also studied and compared with Hartree-Fock SCF calculations and with the results obtained for some of the more commonly used force fields. The agreement between the NEMO and SCF energies for the complexes is in general superior to that of the other force fields. In the C7 region the surfaces obtained from the intramolecular part of the commonly used force fields are too flat compared to the NEMO potential and the ab initio calculations. We further analyze the possibility of using a charge distribution obtained from one conformation to describe the charge distribution of other conformations. We have found that the use of polarizabilities and generic dipoles can model most of the changes in charge density due to the different geometry of the new conformations, but that one can expect additional errors in the interaction energies that are of the order of 1 kcal/mol. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 24: 161-176, 200

Evolution of substrate specificity and protein-protein interactions in three enzyme superfamilies

Superfamilies are a classification system to combine proteins that are related through a common evolutionary origin, share similar sequences, structures, and core reaction mechanisms, but exert different functions. Today, for most superfamilies tens of thousands of sequences and hundreds of structures are known and most of the different functions of their members have been elucidated. Superfamilies thus provide a formal and biologically sensible framework to study evolutionary relationships between proteins. In the present work, the frameworks of three enzyme superfamilies were utilized to get insights into several important aspects of enzyme evolution. The first part of this work addresses the question how enzymatic mono- and bi-functionality have evolved in the superfamily of ribose-binding (βα)8-barrel sugar isomerases. This superfamily contains the homologous enzymes HisA and TrpF, which catalyze similar reactions in histidine and tryptophan biosynthesis, as well as the bi-functional enzyme PriA, which catalyzes both the HisA and TrpF isomerization reactions. HisA and TrpF are ubiquitous in Archaea and Bacteria, whereas PriA is only found in certain Actinobacteria. These species have lost the dedicated TrpF enzyme and PriA is consequently part of both tryptophan and histidine biosynthesis. Much has been speculated on the evolutionary relationship of these enzymes and whether the bi-functionality of PriA is a remnant from ancient evolutionary times or a more recent development in Actinobacteria. Using ancestral sequence reconstruction it was demonstrated in this work that evolutionary ancestors of modern HisA enzymes display bi-functionality, reminiscent of PriA. A detailed enzymatic characterization of three reconstructed HisA ancestors showed that they catalyze not only the HisA but also the TrpF reaction with comparable catalytic efficiencies in vitro. Metabolic complementation experiments with hisA and trpF deficient Escherichia coli strains furthermore demonstrated that the bi-functional HisA ancestors could support both histidine and tryptophan biosynthesis in vivo. By a combination of sequence- and network-based in silicomethods, several modern HisA enzymes were subsequently identified that possess sequence motifs typical for bi-functional PriA enzymes. The enzymatic characterization of three such modern HisA representatives revealed that they are also bi-functional, albeit to a lesser extent, although the respective organisms possess dedicated TrpF enzymes. Thus, the ancestral bi-functionality has pertained for billions of years in HisA enzymes, without any obvious selective pressure. Consequently, a new model for the evolution of HisA, TrpF, and PriA was proposed: The bi-functionality of ancient HisA variants may have played an important role in maintaining early metabolism by supporting both histidine and tryptophan biosynthesis. After the emergence of dedicated TrpF enzymes the bi-functionality of the ancestors became expendable and diminished to the level observed in modern HisA enzymes. However, the inherent bi-functionality of HisA contributed to the robustness of microbial metabolism and made possible to compensate the loss of a dedicated trpF gene in some Actinobacteria. In these organisms, the available bi-functionality of HisA was exploited, selected for, and enhanced, which eventually led to the modern PriA enzymes. The second part of this work deals with the evolution of substrate specificity and secondary metabolic enzymes in a superfamily of chorismate-utilizing enzymes, named MST-superfamily. Chorismate is a central metabolic node molecule and the starting point for the biosynthesis of various important metabolites, including aromatic amino acids, folate, or iron-chelating siderophores. The MST-enzymes catalyze the committed steps of these biosynthetic pathways and are highly similar in sequence, structure, and reaction mechanism. However, the MST-enzymes that are part of primary metabolic pathways employ exclusively ammonia as a nucleophile to aminate chorismate, whereas those that are part of secondary metabolic pathways exclusively employ water as a nucleophile to hydroxylate chorismate. Based on the notion that secondary metabolic enzymes are descendants of primary metabolic ones, it was investigated in this part of this work by which mechanism the transition from primary metabolic to secondary metabolic MSTenzymes went along with a change in nucleophile-specificity from ammonia to water. Initially, network-based, phylogenetic, and structure-based in silicomethods were applied to identify two key amino acids in the nucleophile access channel of the active site that distinguish primary-metabolic/ammonia-utilizing and secondary-metabolic/water-utilizing MST-enzymes. The importance of these key positions was subsequently examined by rationally designing sixteen variants of the MST-enzyme anthranilate synthase, which normally employs ammonia as a nucleophile. The enzymatic characterization of these variants by HPLC-MS showed that the right combination of amino acids at the two key positions indeed resulted in a broadening of nucleophile specificity to also include water. These anthranilate synthase variants hydroxylated chorismate and formed isochorismate with efficiencies comparable to native secondary-metabolic/water-utilizing isochorismate synthases. Moreover, these variants were still able to employ ammonia as a nucleophile and formed their native product anthranilate; hence they were bi-functional. These experiments demonstrated that nucleophile specificity in the MST-superfamily can readily switch from ammonia to water. Moreover, the observed bi-functionality of the anthranilate synthase variants argues that the evolution of secondary metabolic MST-enzymes may have proceeded through bi-functional intermediates. Such metabolic generalists may have allowed for the formation of novel metabolites (isochorismate) while maintaining the formation of important primary metabolic metabolites (anthranilate). This scenario consequently does not a priorirequire gene duplication events and thus precludes negative metabolic effects linked to retaining redundant gene copies. The third part of this work pursues the question how protein-protein interaction specificity is assured in superfamilies of structurally related protein complexes and how the determinants of interaction specificity have evolved. Specific interactions between proteins are vital for almost all cellular functions. This specificity is usually achieved by shape and electrostatic complementarity of protein interfaces. However, the number of different protein folds and interface geometries found in Nature is limited, due to the constraints imposed by efficiently packing hydrogen-bonded secondary structure elements. It is thus a challenging question how interaction specificity is achieved despite structural limitations and how the formation of non-physiological complexes is avoided when several possible interaction partners with similar interface geometries are available. In order to address this problem, initially a comprehensive computational survey of the interface geometries of over 300 bacterial, heteromeric protein complexes and all their homologs of respective superfamilies was performed. This survey revealed that in about 10% of the superfamilies interface geometries vary significantly between related complexes that share homologous subunits. In these cases interfaces were extended by socalled interface add-ons, which typically comprise 10-20 amino acids, form well-defined secondary structure elements, and significantly contribute to complex stability. These characteristics suggested that interface add-ons differentiate between structurally related protein complexes and contribute to interaction specificity through negative design. In order to back this assumption, the case of the interface add-on found in a superfamily of glutamine amidotransferase complexes involved in tryptophan and folate biosynthesis was subsequently analyzed in detail. These complexes comprise synthase and glutaminase subunits that interact to transfer ammonia from glutamine to an acceptor substrate. A subset of synthase subunits exclusively involved in tryptophan biosynthesis contains the interface add-on, whereas it is absent in all other homologous synthase subunits, including those exclusively involved in folate biosynthesis. The comprehensive experimental characterization of 54 combinations of different synthase and glutaminase subunits by chromatographic methods, light scattering, mass spectrometry, and enzyme kinetics demonstrated that the presence or absence of the interface add-on determines interaction specificity. An in silicogenetic profiling of over 15000 archaeal and bacterial genomes together with in vivogrowth assays showed that the interface add-on found in complexes of tryptophan biosynthesis is biologically relevant for preventing cross-interactions with the homologous complexes of folate biosynthesis, which would lead to harmful metabolic cross-talk that negatively affects cellular fitness. It was finally shown by protein design that the evolution of the interface add-on in these complexes most likely proceeded via intermediary complexes with relaxed interaction specificity. In conclusion, this part of this work demonstrates that interface add-ons are evolutionary tools to facilitate interaction specificity in superfamilies of homologous proteins or in cases where a protein has to discriminate between several potential interaction partners that share similar interface geometries. In summary, the presented work leads to an improved understanding of the mechanisms behind the evolution of enzymatic mono- and bi-functionality, emphasizes the importance of generalist, bi- or multi-functional enzymes for the evolution of secondary metabolic pathways, and finally describes a so far overlooked structural tool for the evolutionary specification of protein-protein interactions

Surface functionalization of bioactive glasses with natural molecules of biological significance

Natural or artificial materials used for replacement or supplement the functions of living tissues, termed as biomaterials, may be bioinert (i.e. alumina and zorconia,) resorbable (i.e. tricalcium phosphate), bioactive (i.e. hydroxyapatite, bioactive glasses, and glass-ceramics) or porous for tissue ingrowth (i.e. hydroxyapatite-coated metals). Among all the biomaterials, bioactive glass and glass-ceramics are widely used in orthopedic and dental applications and are being developed for tissue engineering. However, to a large extent, the behavior and overall performance of biomaterials are governed by surface properties. Surface modifications therefore provide unique possibilities to control the subsequent surface interaction and response which are required for particular application. By tailoring the material surface, a wide portfolio of additional functionalities is enabled to overcome material deficiencies while maintaining its bulk material properties. As a consequence, the surface functionalization of materials has become pivotal for academic research as well as industrial product development. Plant-derived polyphenols are compounds possessing one or more aromatic rings with one or more hydroxyl groups. They are broadly distributed in the plant kingdom and are the most abundant secondary metabolites of plants, with more than 8,000 phenolic structures currently known, ranging from simple molecules such as phenolic acids to highly polymerized substances such as tannins. Numerous researches and investigation reported the notable biological activities of polyphenol, such as cardiovascular protection, cancer prevention and treatment, antiaging activity as well as applications in Alzheimer’s disease, oral health, immune function diabetes and other neurodegenerative disorders. Till now, a number of previous investigations provide a number of surface functionalization techniques and make it possible to graft various kinds of biomolecules such as proteins, growth factors and enzymes to the surface of bioactive glass and glass-ceramics. However, very few researches have been focused on the coupling of natural bioactive polyphenols on surface of bioactive glass and glass-ceramics. As a conclusion, the aim of this thesis is to combine bioactive glasses and glass-ceramics with natural polyphenols, in this case they are grape polyphenol and tea polyphenol extracted from grape skin and green tea respectively, in order to make it possible to immobilize biomolecules as well as prepare smart biomaterials with both typical inorganic activity and specific biological benefits from natural molecule. This thesis can be divided into five chapters. The first chapter introduces the composition, chemical structure, biological properties and potential applications of plant polyphenols. In chapter II, the extraction methods and analysis techniques involved in polyphenol investigation are reviewed. Chapter III mainly illustrated the structure, property and biomedical application of biomaterials as well as methodologies and evaluation of surface functionalization. Materials and techniques related to this thesis are demonstrated in chapter IV. The last chapter, also the core chapter of this thesis, describes the results and discussions in five separate sections: i) surface functionalization of SCNA and CEL2 with gallic acid; ii) surface functionalization of SCNA and CEL2 with polyphenol extracted from grape skin; iii) surface functionalization of SCNA and CEL2 with polyphenol extracted from green tea; iv) surface functionalization of SC-45 with gallic acid and buffered gallic acid and v) surface functionalization of SC-45 with folic acid