Wang Xunxun, Shi Ya-Zhou
Guizhou Key Laboratory of Microbio and Infectious Disease Prevention & Control, School of Biology and Engineering, Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang, China.
Research Center of Nonlinear Science, School of Mathematics & Statistics, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, China.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2025 Aug 18;21(8):e1013346. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013346. eCollection 2025 Aug.
Understanding the three-dimensional (3D) structure and stability of DNA is essential for elucidating its biological functions and advancing structure-based drug design. Here, we present an improved coarse-grained (CG) model for ab initio prediction of DNA folding, integrating a refined electrostatic potential, replica-exchange Monte Carlo simulations, and weighted histogram analysis. The model accurately predicts the 3D structures of DNA with multi-way junctions (e.g., achieving a mean RMSD of ~8.8 Å for top-ranked structures across four DNAs with three- or four-way junctions) from sequence, outperforming existing fragment-assembly and AI-based approaches. The model also reproduces the thermal stability of junctions across diverse sequences and lengths, with predicted melting temperatures deviating by less than 5 °C from experimental values, under both monovalent (Na⁺) and divalent (Mg2⁺) ionic conditions. Furthermore, analysis of the thermal unfolding pathways reveals that the overall stability of multi-way junctions is primarily determined by the relative free energies of key intermediate states. These results provide a robust framework for predicting complex DNA architectures and offer mechanistic insights into DNA folding and function.
了解DNA的三维(3D)结构和稳定性对于阐明其生物学功能以及推进基于结构的药物设计至关重要。在此,我们提出了一种改进的粗粒度(CG)模型,用于从头预测DNA折叠,该模型整合了精细的静电势、复制交换蒙特卡罗模拟和加权直方图分析。该模型能够从序列准确预测具有多向连接的DNA的3D结构(例如,对于四个具有三向或四向连接的DNA的排名靠前的结构,平均均方根偏差约为8.8 Å),优于现有的片段组装和基于人工智能的方法。在单价(Na⁺)和二价(Mg²⁺)离子条件下,该模型还能重现不同序列和长度的连接点的热稳定性,预测的解链温度与实验值的偏差小于5°C。此外,对热解折叠途径的分析表明,多向连接点的整体稳定性主要由关键中间态的相对自由能决定。这些结果为预测复杂的DNA结构提供了一个强大的框架,并为DNA折叠和功能提供了机制性见解。