Driving Force for the Association of Hydrophobic Peptides: The Importance of Electrostatic Interactions in Coarse-Grained Water Models

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (14) ◽  
pp. 1794-1798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhe Wu ◽  
Qiang Cui ◽  
Arun Yethiraj
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney Carvalho ◽  
Ralf Metzler ◽  
Andrey Cherstvy ◽  
Daniel Caetano

Several applications arise from the confinement of proteins on surfaces since their stability and biological activity are enhanced. It is also known that the way a protein adsorbs on the surface is important for its biological function since its active sites should not be obstructed. In this study, the adsorption properties of hen egg-white Lysozyme, HEWL, into a negatively charged silica pore is examined employing a coarse-grained model and constant-pH Monte Carlo simulations. The role of electrostatic interactions is taken into account when including the Debye-Hueckel potentials into the Ca structure-based model. We evaluate the effects of pH, salt concentration, and pore radius on the protein preferential orientation and spatial distribution of its residues regarding the pore surface. By mapping the residues that stay closer to the pore surface, we find the increase of pH leads to orientational changes of the adsorbed protein when the solution pH gets closer to the HEWL isoelectric point. At these conditions, the pKa shift of these important residues caused by the adsorption into the charged confining surface results in a HEWL charge distribution that stabilizes the adsorption in the observed protein orientation. We compare our observations to the results of pKa shift for HEWL available in the literature and to some experimental data.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debayan Chakraborty ◽  
Naoto Hori ◽  
D. Thirumalai

AbstractWe develop a robust coarse-grained model for single and double stranded DNA by representing each nucleotide by three interaction sites (TIS) located at the centers of mass of sugar, phosphate, and base. The resulting TIS model includes base-stacking, hydrogen bond, and electrostatic interactions as well as bond-stretching and bond angle potentials that account for the polymeric nature of DNA. The choices of force constants for stretching and the bending potentials were guided by a Boltzmann inversion procedure using a large representative set of DNA structures extracted from the Protein Data Bank. Some of the parameters in the stacking interactions were calculated using a learning procedure, which ensured that the experimentally measured melting temperatures of dimers are faithfully reproduced. Without any further adjustments, the calculations based on the TIS model reproduces the experimentally measured salt and sequence dependence of the size of single stranded DNA (ssDNA), as well as the persistence lengths of poly(dA) and poly(dT) chains. Interestingly, upon application of mechanical force the extension of poly(dA) exhibits a plateau, which we trace to the formation of stacked helical domains. In contrast, the force-extension curve (FEC) of poly(dT) is entropic in origin, and could be described by a standard polymer model. We also show that the persistence length of double stranded DNA, formed from two complementary ssDNAs with one hundred and thirty base pairs, is consistent with the prediction based on the worm-like chain. The persistence length, which decreases with increasing salt concentration, is in accord with the Odijk-Skolnick-Fixman theory intended for stiff polyelectrolyte chains near the rod limit. The range of applications, which did not require adjusting any parameter after the initial construction based solely on PDB structures and melting profiles of dimers, attests to the transferability and robustness of the TIS model for ssDNA and dsDNA.


2018 ◽  
Vol 122 (6) ◽  
pp. 1958-1971 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karteek K. Bejagam ◽  
Samrendra Singh ◽  
Yaxin An ◽  
Carter Berry ◽  
Sanket A. Deshmukh
Keyword(s):  

2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (5) ◽  
pp. 054501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Michalowsky ◽  
Lars V. Schäfer ◽  
Christian Holm ◽  
Jens Smiatek

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 20180066 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Pasquali ◽  
E. Frezza ◽  
F. L. Barroso da Silva

Electrostatic interactions play a pivotal role in many biomolecular processes. The molecular organization and function in biological systems are largely determined by these interactions. Owing to the highly negative charge of RNA, the effect is expected to be more pronounced in this system. Moreover, RNA base pairing is dependent on the charge of the base, giving rise to alternative secondary and tertiary structures. The equilibrium between uncharged and charged bases is regulated by the solution pH, which is therefore a key environmental condition influencing the molecule’s structure and behaviour. By means of constant-pH Monte Carlo simulations based on a fast proton titration scheme, coupled with the coarse-grained model HiRE-RNA, molecular dynamic simulations of RNA molecules at constant pH enable us to explore the RNA conformational plasticity at different pH values as well as to compute electrostatic properties as local p K a values for each nucleotide.


2010 ◽  
Vol 108 (15) ◽  
pp. 2007-2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xibing He ◽  
Wataru Shinoda ◽  
Russell DeVane ◽  
Michael L. Klein

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 709-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
Licui Chen ◽  
Lianghui Gao ◽  
Weihai Fang ◽  
Leonardo Golubovic

AbstractIn the present article, coarse grained Dissipative Particle Dynamics simulation with implementation of electrostatic interactions is developed in constant pressure and surface tension ensemble to elucidate how the antimicrobial peptide molecules affect bilayer cell membrane structure and kill bacteria. We find that peptides with different chemical-physical properties exhibit different membrane obstructing mechanisms. Peptide molecules can destroy vital functions of the affected bacteria by translocating across their membranes via worm-holes, or by associating with membrane lipids to form hydrophilic cores trapped inside the hydrophobic domain of the membranes. In the latter model, the affected membranes are strongly buckled, in accord with very recent experimental observations [G. E. Fantner et al., Nat. Nanotech., 5 (2010), pp. 280-285].


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 2383-2390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruslan L. Davidchack ◽  
Richard Handel ◽  
Jamshed Anwar ◽  
Andrey V. Brukhno

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raju Lunkad ◽  
Anastasiia Murmiliuk ◽  
Pascal Hebbeker ◽  
Milan Boublík ◽  
Zdeněk Tošner ◽  
...  

Weak ampholytes are ubiquitous in nature and commonly found in artificial pH-responsive systems. However, our limited understanding of their ionisation response and the lack of predictive capabilities hinder the bottom-up design of such systems. Here, we used a coarse-grained model of a flexible polymer with weakly ionisable monomer units to quantitatively analyse the ionisation behaviour of two oligopeptides. Differences in ionisation response between oligopeptides and monomeric amino acids showed that electrostatic interactions between weak acid and base side chains play a key role in oligopeptide ionisation, as predicted by our model. Moreover, by comparing our simulations with experimental results from potentiometric titration, capillary zone electrophoresis and NMR, we demonstrated that our model reliably predicts the ionisation response and electrophoretic mobilities of various peptide sequences. Ultimately, our model is the first step towards using predictive bottom-up design of responsive ampholytes to tailor their properties as a function of charge and pH.<br>


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