a Department of Chemical Engineering (ETSEIB) , Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya , Av. Diagonal, 647. 08028 Barcelona , Spain.
J Biomol Struct Dyn. 2018 Jul;36(9):2436-2448. doi: 10.1080/07391102.2017.1357503. Epub 2017 Aug 14.
Despite GPCRs sharing a common seven helix bundle, analysis of the diverse crystallographic structures available reveal specific features that might be relevant for ligand design. Despite the number of crystallographic structures of GPCRs steadily increasing, there are still challenges that hamper the availability of new structures. In the absence of a crystallographic structure, homology modeling remains one of the important techniques for constructing 3D models of proteins. In the present study we investigated the use of molecular dynamics simulations for the refinement of GPCRs models constructed by homology modeling. Specifically, we investigated the relevance of template selection, ligand inclusion as well as the length of the simulation on the quality of the GPCRs models constructed. For this purpose we chose the crystallographic structure of the rat muscarinic M3 receptor as reference and constructed diverse atomistic models by homology modeling, using different templates. Specifically, templates used in the present work include the human muscarinic M2; the more distant human histamine H1 and the even more distant bovine rhodopsin as shown in the GPCRs phylogenetic tree. We also investigated the use or not of a ligand in the refinement process. Hence, we conducted the refinement process of the M3 model using the M2 muscarinic as template with tiotropium or NMS docked in the orthosteric site and compared with the results obtained with a model refined without any ligand bound.
尽管 G 蛋白偶联受体 (GPCR) 具有共同的七螺旋束结构,但对现有多样化晶体结构的分析表明,存在一些可能与配体设计相关的特定特征。尽管 GPCR 的晶体结构数量稳步增加,但仍存在一些阻碍新结构可用性的挑战。在缺乏晶体结构的情况下,同源建模仍然是构建蛋白质 3D 模型的重要技术之一。在本研究中,我们研究了使用分子动力学模拟来改进通过同源建模构建的 GPCR 模型。具体来说,我们研究了模板选择、配体包含以及模拟长度对构建的 GPCR 模型质量的相关性。为此,我们选择了大鼠毒蕈碱 M3 受体的晶体结构作为参考,并使用不同的模板通过同源建模构建了不同的原子模型。具体来说,本工作中使用的模板包括人类毒蕈碱 M2;距离更远的人类组胺 H1 和更远的牛视紫红质,如 GPCR 系统发育树所示。我们还研究了在细化过程中是否使用配体。因此,我们使用 M2 毒蕈碱作为模板,对 M3 模型进行细化,并将噻托溴铵或 NMS 对接在正位点,与没有结合任何配体的模型的细化结果进行比较。