Feng Mei, Kang Hongsuk, Yang Zaixing, Luan Binquan, Zhou Ruhong
Department of Physics, Institute of Quantitative Biology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Computational Biological Center, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA.
J Chem Phys. 2016 Jun 14;144(22):225102. doi: 10.1063/1.4953562.
Graphene oxide (GO) is a promising novel nanomaterial with a wide range of potential biomedical applications due to its many intriguing properties. However, very little research has been conducted to study its possible adverse effects on protein-protein interactions (and thus subsequent toxicity to human). Here, the potential cytotoxicity of GO is investigated at molecular level using large-scale, all-atom molecular dynamics simulations to explore the interaction mechanism between a protein dimer and a GO nanosheet oxidized at different levels. Our theoretical results reveal that GO nanosheet could intercalate between the two monomers of HIV-1 integrase dimer, disrupting the protein-protein interactions and eventually lead to dimer disassociation as graphene does [B. Luan et al., ACS Nano 9(1), 663 (2015)], albeit its insertion process is slower when compared with graphene due to the additional steric and attractive interactions. This study helps to better understand the toxicity of GO to cell functions which could shed light on how to improve its biocompatibility and biosafety for its wide potential biomedical applications.
氧化石墨烯(GO)是一种很有前景的新型纳米材料,因其具有许多引人关注的特性而在生物医学领域具有广泛的潜在应用。然而,关于其对蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用可能产生的不利影响(进而对人体产生毒性)的研究却非常少。在此,我们通过大规模全原子分子动力学模拟在分子水平上研究了GO的潜在细胞毒性,以探索蛋白质二聚体与不同氧化程度的GO纳米片之间的相互作用机制。我们的理论结果表明,GO纳米片可以插入HIV-1整合酶二聚体的两个单体之间,破坏蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用,并最终导致二聚体解离,就像石墨烯那样[B. Luan等人,《美国化学会纳米》9(1),663(2015)],尽管由于额外的空间位阻和吸引相互作用,其插入过程与石墨烯相比更慢。这项研究有助于更好地理解GO对细胞功能的毒性,这可能为如何提高其生物相容性和生物安全性以实现其广泛的生物医学潜在应用提供线索。