Kurisaki Ikuo, Tanaka Shigenori
Graduate School of System Informatics, Kobe University, 1-1 Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501, Japan.
ACS Omega. 2021 Feb 5;6(7):4749-4758. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c05579. eCollection 2021 Feb 23.
Physicochemical characterization of multimeric biomacromolecule assembly and disassembly processes is a milestone to understand the mechanisms for biological phenomena at the molecular level. Mass spectroscopy (MS) and structural bioinformatics (SB) approaches have become feasible to identify subcomplexes involved in assembly and disassembly, while they cannot provide atomic information sufficient for free-energy calculation to characterize transition mechanism between two different sets of subcomplexes. To combine observations derived from MS and SB approaches with conventional free-energy calculation protocols, we here designed a new reaction pathway sampling method by employing hybrid configuration bias Monte Carlo/molecular dynamics (hcbMC/MD) scheme and applied it to simulate the disassembly process of serum amyloid P component (SAP) pentamer. The results we obtained are consistent with those of the earlier MS and SB studies with respect to SAP subcomplex species and the initial stage of SAP disassembly processes. Furthermore, we observed a novel dissociation event, ring-opening reaction of SAP pentamer. Employing free-energy calculation combined with the hcbMC/MD reaction pathway trajectories, we moreover obtained experimentally testable observations on (1) reaction time of the ring-opening reaction and (2) importance of Asp42 and Lys117 for stable formation of SAP oligomer.
多聚体生物大分子组装和解聚过程的物理化学特征是在分子水平上理解生物现象机制的一个里程碑。质谱(MS)和结构生物信息学(SB)方法已能够识别参与组装和解聚的亚复合物,然而,它们无法提供足够的原子信息用于自由能计算,以表征两组不同亚复合物之间的转变机制。为了将源自MS和SB方法的观察结果与传统的自由能计算协议相结合,我们在此设计了一种新的反应路径采样方法,采用混合构型偏置蒙特卡罗/分子动力学(hcbMC/MD)方案,并将其应用于模拟血清淀粉样蛋白P成分(SAP)五聚体的解聚过程。我们获得的结果在SAP亚复合物种类和SAP解聚过程的初始阶段与早期的MS和SB研究结果一致。此外,我们观察到一个新的解离事件,即SAP五聚体的开环反应。通过结合自由能计算和hcbMC/MD反应路径轨迹,我们还获得了关于(1)开环反应的反应时间和(2)Asp42和Lys117对SAP寡聚体稳定形成的重要性的可实验验证的观察结果。