Allosteric Conversation in the Androgen Receptor Ligand-Binding Domain Surfaces

Androgen receptor (AR) is a major therapeutic target that plays pivotal roles in prostate cancer (PCa) and androgen insensitivity syndromes. Wepreviously proposed that compounds recruited to ligand-binding domain (LBD) surfaces could regulate AR activity in hormone-refractory PCa and discovered several surface modulators of AR function. Surprisingly, the most effective compounds bound preferentially to a surface of unknown function [binding function 3 (BF-3)] instead of the coactivator-binding site [activation function 2 (AF-2)]. Different BF-3 mutations have been identified in PCa or androgen insensitivity syndrome patients, and they can strongly affect AR activity. Further, comparison of AR x-ray structures with and without bound ligands at BF-3 and AF-2 showed structural coupling between both pockets. Here, we combine experimental evidence and molecular dynamic simulations to investigate whether BF-3 mutations affect AR LBD function and dynamics possibly via allosteric conversation between surface sites. Our data indicate that AF-2 conformation is indeed closely coupled to BF-3 and provide mechanistic proof of their structural interconnection. BF-3 mutations may function as allosteric elicitors, probably shifting the AR LBD conformational ensemble toward conformations that alter AF-2 propensity to reorganize into subpockets that accommodate N-terminal domain and coactivator peptides. The induced conformation may result in either increased or decreased AR activity. Activating BF-3 mutations also favor the formation of another pocket (BF-4) in the vicinity of AF-2 and BF-3, which we also previously identified as a hot spot for a small compound. We discuss the possibility that BF-3 may be a protein-docking site that binds to the N-terminal domain and corepressors. AR surface sites are attractive pharmacological targets to develop allosteric modulators that might be alternative lead compounds for drug design. © 2012 by The Endocrie Society

PsyGeNET : a knowledge platform on psychiatric disorders and their genes

Altres ajuts: Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (no. 115372, EMIF and no. 115191, Open PHACTS), resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies' in kind contribution.Summary: PsyGeNET (Psychiatric disorders and Genes association NETwork) is a knowledge platform for the exploratory analysis of psychiatric diseases and their associated genes. PsyGeNET is composed of a database and a web interface supporting data search, visualization, filtering and sharing. PsyGeNET integrates information from DisGeNET and data extracted from the literature by text mining, which has been curated by domain experts. It currently contains 2642 associations between 1271 genes and 37 psychiatric disease concepts. In its first release, PsyGeNET is focused on three psychiatric disorders: major depression, alcohol and cocaine use disorders. PsyGeNET represents a comprehensive, open access resource for the analysis of the molecular mechanisms underpinning psychiatric disorders and their comorbidities

Methotrexate and relative risk of dementia amongst patients with rheumatoid arthritis:A multi-national multi-database case-control study

Background: Inflammatory processes have been shown to play a role in dementia. To understand this role, we selected two anti-inflammatory drugs (methotrexate and sulfasalazine) to study their association with dementia risk. Methods: A retrospective matched case-control study of patients over 50 with rheumatoid arthritis (486 dementia cases and 641 controls) who were identified from ele

Identification of hot-spot residues in protein-protein interactions by computational docking

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The study of protein-protein interactions is becoming increasingly important for biotechnological and therapeutic reasons. We can define two major areas therein: the structural prediction of protein-protein binding mode, and the identification of the relevant residues for the interaction (so called 'hot-spots'). These hot-spot residues have high interest since they are considered one of the possible ways of disrupting a protein-protein interaction. Unfortunately, large-scale experimental measurement of residue contribution to the binding energy, based on alanine-scanning experiments, is costly and thus data is fairly limited. Recent computational approaches for hot-spot prediction have been reported, but they usually require the structure of the complex.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have applied here normalized interface propensity (<it>NIP</it>) values derived from rigid-body docking with electrostatics and desolvation scoring for the prediction of interaction hot-spots. This parameter identifies hot-spot residues on interacting proteins with predictive rates that are comparable to other existing methods (up to 80% positive predictive value), and the advantage of not requiring any prior structural knowledge of the complex.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The <it>NIP </it>values derived from rigid-body docking can reliably identify a number of hot-spot residues whose contribution to the interaction arises from electrostatics and desolvation effects. Our method can propose residues to guide experiments in complexes of biological or therapeutic interest, even in cases with no available 3D structure of the complex.</p

Collective variable driven molecular dynamics to improve protein­ protein docking scoring

In biophysics, the structural prediction of protein–protein complexes starting from the unbound form of the two interacting monomers is a major difficulty. Although current computational docking protocols are able to generate near-native solutions in a reasonable time, the problem of identifying near-native conformations from a pool of solutions remains very challenging. In this study, we use molecular dynamics simulations driven by a collective reaction coordinate to optimize full hydrogen bond networks in a set of protein–protein docking solutions. The collective coordinate biases the system to maximize the formation of hydrogen bonds at the protein–protein interface as well as all over the structure. The reaction coordinate is therefore a measure for docking poses affinity and hence is used as scoring function to identify near-native conformations.Fil: Masone, Diego Fernando. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Grosdidier, Solène. Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Hospital del Mar Research Institute. Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics; Españ

PsyGeNET: a knowledge platform on psychiatric disorders and their genes

PsyGeNET (Psychiatric disorders and Genes association NETwork) is a knowledge platform for the exploratory analysis of psychiatric diseases and their associated genes. PsyGeNET is composed of a database and a web interface supporting data search, visualization, filtering and sharing. PsyGeNET integrates information from DisGeNET and data extracted from the literature by text mining, which has been curated by domain experts. It currently contains 2642 associations between 1271 genes and 37 psychiatric disease concepts. In its first release, PsyGeNET is focused on three psychiatric disorders: major depression, alcohol and cocaine use disorders. PsyGeNET represents a comprehensive, open access resource for the analysis of the molecular mechanisms underpinning psychiatric disorders and their comorbidities. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The PysGeNET platform is freely available at http://www.psygenet.org/. The PsyGeNET database is made available under the Open Database License (http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/). CONTACT: [email protected] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:/nSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.This work was supported by Instituto de Salud Carlos III-Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (CP10/00524, PI13/00082 and RD12/028/024 and RD12/0028/0009 Retics-RTA), MINECO (SAF2013-41761-R-Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional), the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (no. 115372, EMIF and no. 115191, Open PHACTS), resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution. The Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) is a node of the Spanish National Institute of Bioinformatics (INB)

PsyGeNET: a knowledge platform on psychiatric disorders and their genes

PsyGeNET (Psychiatric disorders and Genes association NETwork) is a knowledge platform for the exploratory analysis of psychiatric diseases and their associated genes. PsyGeNET is composed of a database and a web interface supporting data search, visualization, filtering and sharing. PsyGeNET integrates information from DisGeNET and data extracted from the literature by text mining, which has been curated by domain experts. It currently contains 2642 associations between 1271 genes and 37 psychiatric disease concepts. In its first release, PsyGeNET is focused on three psychiatric disorders: major depression, alcohol and cocaine use disorders. PsyGeNET represents a comprehensive, open access resource for the analysis of the molecular mechanisms underpinning psychiatric disorders and their comorbidities. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The PysGeNET platform is freely available at http://www.psygenet.org/. The PsyGeNET database is made available under the Open Database License (http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/). CONTACT: [email protected] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:/nSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.This work was supported by Instituto de Salud Carlos III-Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (CP10/00524, PI13/00082 and RD12/028/024 and RD12/0028/0009 Retics-RTA), MINECO (SAF2013-41761-R-Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional), the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (no. 115372, EMIF and no. 115191, Open PHACTS), resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution. The Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) is a node of the Spanish National Institute of Bioinformatics (INB)