Reorientations of Aromatic Amino Acids and Their Side Chain Models: Anisotropy Measurements and Molecular Dynamics Simulations

2010 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Kuczera ◽  
Jay Unruh ◽  
Carey K. Johnson ◽  
Gouri S. Jas
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (9) ◽  
pp. 928-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Palazzolo ◽  
Chiara Paravicini ◽  
Tommaso Laurenzi ◽  
Sara Adobati ◽  
Simona Saporiti ◽  
...  

SLC6A14 (ATB0,+) is a sodium- and chloride-dependent neutral and dibasic amino acid transporter that regulates the distribution of amino acids across cell membranes. The transporter is overexpressed in many human cancers characterized by an increased demand for amino acids; as such, it was recently acknowledged as a novel target for cancer therapy. The knowledge on the molecular mechanism of SLC6A14 transport is still limited, but some elegant studies on related transporters report the involvement of the 12 transmembrane α-helices in the transport mechanism, and describe structural rearrangements mediated by electrostatic interactions with some pivotal gating residues. In the present work, we constructed a SLC6A14 model in outward-facing conformation via homology modeling and used molecular dynamics simulations to predict amino acid residues critical for substrate recognition and translocation. We docked the proteinogenic amino acids and other known substrates in the SLC6A14 binding site to study both gating regions and the exposed residues involved in transport. Interestingly, some of these residues correspond to those previously identified in other LeuT-fold transporters; however, we could also identify a novel relevant residue with such function. For the first time, by combined approaches of molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations, we highlight the potential role of these residues in neutral amino acid transport. This novel information unravels new aspects of the human SLC6A14 structure–function relationship and may have important outcomes for cancer treatment through the design of novel inhibitors of SLC6A14-mediated transport.


RSC Advances ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (20) ◽  
pp. 11134-11144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lanyan He ◽  
Pingmei Wang ◽  
Lipeng He ◽  
Zhou Qu ◽  
Jianhui Luo ◽  
...  

The self-organization of five model side-chain decorated polyaromatic asphaltene molecules with or without toluene solvent was investigated by means of molecular dynamic (MD) simulations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (40) ◽  
pp. 25901-25909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Ochoa ◽  
Miguel A. Soler ◽  
Alessandro Laio ◽  
Pilar Cossio

Single-point mutation protocols based on backbone-dependent rotamer libraries show the best performance in predicting equilibrium configurations from molecular dynamics simulations.


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