Resolving the fine structure in the energy landscapes of repeat proteins

Ankyrin (ANK) repeat proteins are coded by tandem occurrences of patterns with around 33 amino acids. They often mediate protein–protein interactions in a diversity of biological systems. These proteins have an elongated non-globular shape and often display complex folding mechanisms. This work inve...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Sanches, Murilo N., Parra, Rodrigo Gonzalo, Viegas, Rafael Giordano, Oliveira Junior, Antonio Bento, Wolynes, Peter, Ferreiro, Diego U., Leite, Vitor B.P.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/371618
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/371618
https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/qrd.2022.4
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Protein-protein interactions
Molecular dynamics
Protein folding
Folding funnel
Energy landscape visualisation
Proteïnes
Simulació per ordinador
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Aplicacions de la informàtica::Bioinformàtica
Descripción
Sumario:Ankyrin (ANK) repeat proteins are coded by tandem occurrences of patterns with around 33 amino acids. They often mediate protein–protein interactions in a diversity of biological systems. These proteins have an elongated non-globular shape and often display complex folding mechanisms. This work investigates the energy landscape of representative proteins of this class made up of 3, 4 and 6 ANK repeats using the energy-landscape visualisation method (ELViM). By combining biased and unbiased coarse-grained molecular dynamics AWSEM simulations that sample conformations along the folding trajectories with the ELViM structure-based phase space, one finds a three-dimensional representation of the globally funnelled energy surface. In this representation, it is possible to delineate distinct folding pathways. We show that ELViMs can project, in a natural way, the intricacies of the highly dimensional energy landscapes encoded by the highly symmetric ankyrin repeat proteins into useful low-dimensional representations. These projections can discriminate between multiplicities of specific parallel folding mechanisms that otherwise can be hidden in oversimplified depictions.