Coupling between Catalytic Loop Motions and Enzyme Global Dynamics

Catalytic loop motions facilitate substrate recognition and binding in many enzymes. While these motions appear to be highly flexible, their functional significance suggests that structure-encoded preferences may play a role in selecting particular mechanisms of motions. We performed an extensive study on a set of enzymes to assess whether the collective/global dynamics, as predicted by elastic network models (ENMs), facilitates or even defines the local motions undergone by functional loops. Our dataset includes a total of 117 crystal structures for ten enzymes of different sizes and oligomerization states. Each enzyme contains a specific functional/catalytic loop (10-21 residues long) that closes over the active site during catalysis. Principal component analysis (PCA) of the available crystal structures (including apo and ligand-bound forms) for each enzyme revealed the dominant conformational changes taking place in these loops upon substrate binding. These experimentally observed loop reconfigurations are shown to be predominantly driven by energetically favored modes of motion intrinsically accessible to the enzyme in the absence of its substrate. The analysis suggests that robust global modes cooperatively defined by the overall enzyme architecture also entail local components that assist in suitable opening/closure of the catalytic loop over the active site. © 2012 Kurkcuoglu et al

An overview of data‐driven HADDOCK strategies in CAPRI rounds 38-45

Our information-driven docking approach HADDOCK has demonstrated a sustained performance since the start of its participation to CAPRI. This is due, in part, to its ability to integrate data into the modeling process, and to the robustness of its scoring function. We participated in CAPRI both as server and manual predictors. In CAPRI rounds 38-45, we have used various strategies depending on the available information. These ranged from imposing restraints to a few residues identified from literature as being important for the interaction, to binding pockets identified from homologous complexes or template-based refinement/CA-CA restraint-guided docking from identified templates. When relevant, symmetry restraints were used to limit the conformational sampling. We also tested for a large decamer target a new implementation of the MARTINI coarse-grained force field in HADDOCK. Overall, we obtained acceptable or better predictions for 13 and 11 server and manual submissions, respectively, out of the 22 interfaces. Our server performance (acceptable or higher-quality models when considering the top 10) was better (59%) than the manual (50%) one, in which we typically experiment with various combinations of protocols and data sources. Again, our simple scoring function based on a linear combination of intermolecular van der Waals and electrostatic energies and an empirical desolvation term demonstrated a good performance in the scoring experiment with a 63% success rate across all 22 interfaces. An analysis of model quality indicates that, while we are consistently performing well in generating acceptable models, there is room for improvement for generating/identifying higher quality models

INDIGO-DataCloud: A data and computing platform to facilitate seamless access to e-infrastructures

This paper describes the achievements of the H2020 project INDIGO-DataCloud. The project has provided e-infrastructures with tools, applications and cloud framework enhancements to manage the demanding requirements of scientific communities, either locally or through enhanced interfaces. The middleware developed allows to federate hybrid resources, to easily write, port and run scientific applications to the cloud. In particular, we have extended existing PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions, allowing public and private e-infrastructures, including those provided by EGI, EUDAT, and Helix Nebula, to integrate their existing services and make them available through AAI services compliant with GEANT interfederation policies, thus guaranteeing transparency and trust in the provisioning of such services. Our middleware facilitates the execution of applications using containers on Cloud and Grid based infrastructures, as well as on HPC clusters. Our developments are freely downloadable as open source components, and are already being integrated into many scientific applications

Substrate Effect on Catalytic Loop and Global Dynamics of Triosephosphate Isomerase

The opening/closure of the catalytic loop 6 over the active site in apo triosephosphate isomerase (TIM) has been previously shown to be driven by the global motions of the enzyme, specifically the counter-clockwise rotation of the subunits. In this work, the effect of the substrate dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP) on TIM dynamics is assessed using two apo and two DHAP-bound molecular dynamics (MD) trajectories (each 60 ns long). Multiple events of catalytic loop opening/closure take place during 60 ns runs for both apo TIM and its DHAP-complex. However, counter-clockwise rotation observed in apo TIM is suppressed and bending-type motions are linked to loop dynamics in the presence of DHAP. Bound DHAP molecules also reduce the overall mobility of the enzyme and change the pattern of orientational cross-correlations, mostly those within each subunit. The fluctuations of pseudodihedral angles of the loop 6 residues are enhanced towards the C-terminus, when DHAP is bound at the active site

Correction: Ligand Docking to Intermediate and Close-To-Bound Conformers Generated by an Elastic Network Model Based Algorithm for Highly Flexible Proteins.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158063.]

Pre- and post-docking sampling of conformational changes using ClustENM and HADDOCK for protein-protein and protein-DNA systems

Incorporating the dynamic nature of biomolecules in the modeling of their complexes is a challenge, especially when the extent and direction of the conformational changes taking place upon binding is unknown. Estimating whether the binding of a biomolecule to its partner(s) occurs in a conformational state accessible to its unbound form (“conformational selection”) and/or the binding process induces conformational changes (“induced-fit”) is another challenge. We propose here a method combining conformational sampling using ClustENM—an elastic network-based modeling procedure—with docking using HADDOCK, in a framework that incorporates conformational selection and induced-fit effects upon binding. The extent of the applied deformation is estimated from its energetical costs, inspired from mechanical tensile testing on materials. We applied our pre- and post-docking sampling of conformational changes to the flexible multidomain protein-protein docking benchmark and a subset of the protein-DNA docking benchmark. Our ClustENM-HADDOCK approach produced acceptable to medium quality models in 7/11 and 5/6 cases for the protein-protein and protein-DNA complexes, respectively. The conformational selection (sampling prior to docking) has the highest impact on the quality of the docked models for the protein-protein complexes. The induced-fit stage of the pipeline (post-sampling), however, improved the quality of the final models for the protein-DNA complexes. Compared to previously described strategies to handle conformational changes, ClustENM-HADDOCK performs better than two-body docking in protein-protein cases but worse than a flexible multidomain docking approach. However, it does show a better or similar performance compared to previous protein-DNA docking approaches, which makes it a suitable alternative

Collective Dynamics of the Ribosomal Tunnel Revealed by Elastic Network Modeling

The collective dynamics of the nascent polypeptide exit tunnel are investigated with the computationally efficient elastic network model using normal mode analysis. The calculated normal modes are considered individually and in linear combinations with different coefficients mimicking the phase angles between modes, in order to follow the mechanistic motions of tunnel wall residues. The low frequency fluctuations indicate three distinct regions along the tunnel - the entrance, the neck and the exit – each having distinctly different domain motions. Generally the lining of the entrance region moves in the exit direction, with the exit region having significantly larger motions, but in a perpendicular direction, whereas the confined neck region generally has rotational motions. Especially the universally conserved extensions of ribosomal proteins L4 and L22 located at the narrowest and mechanistically strategic region of tunnel undergo generally anti- or non-correlated motions, which may have an important role in nascent polypeptide gating mechanism. These motions appear to be sufficiently robust so as to be unaffected by the presence of a peptide chain in the tunnel.This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Kurkcuoglu, Ozge, Zeynep Kurkcuoglu, Pemra Doruker, and Robert L. Jernigan. "Collective dynamics of the ribosomal tunnel revealed by elastic network modeling." Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics 75, no. 4 (2009): 837-845., which has been published in final form at doi: 10.1002/prot.22292. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.</p

Conformational changes of the proteins in our dataset.

<p>Left panels show the starting open conformer (blue) that is aligned on the holo structure (grey) with the bound ligand in magenta sticks (cartoon in CAM). For all cases except CAM, the generated conformers that are later used in docking are shown in the right panels aligned on open (transparent blue) and closed (transparent red) structures. For CAM, green conformer is the conformer that has minimum RMSD to the holo structure, generated from CAM simulation. This conformer is used in peptide docking, and the resulting docked structure is taken as the starting point for CAM-pep simulation.</p

Calmodulin structures, where N-lobe, C-lobe and helical linker are shown in red, light green and blue, respectively.

<p>(a) Extended crystal structure (pdb id: 1cll) is used as the starting structure for generating unbound CAM conformers. (b) Conformer gen8 from CAM blind search is aligned to 1cll (transparent, RMSD 6.8 Å). (c) After peptide docking to gen8, the closest docking pose to bound crystal structure (1wrz, transparent) is shown (CAM with 6.8 Å, peptide with 5 Å backbone RMSD. (d) Conformer generation with bound peptide (CAM-pep) leads to further closure towards 1wrz. Here, conformer gen3 from CAM-pep is aligned on 1wrz with a complex carbon alpha RMSD of 3.7 Å (ligand backbone RMSD 2.9 Å). Magenta and cyan peptides correspond to the crystal structure and docked poses, respectively.</p