Molecular Origins of the Unique Conformational Properties of the Polysilanes: A Molecular Dynamics Study of Poly(Di-N-Hexylsilane)

1992 ◽  
Vol 278 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Welsh ◽  
Samuel H. Tersigni ◽  
Wangkan Lin

AbstractThe conformational dynamics of a model compound for poly(di-n-hexylsilane) (PDHS) has been explored using the new molecular dynamics program MM3-MD. MM3-MD trajectories at variable temperatures reveal two abrupt conformational transitions, one near -182°C and another near -175°C, associated with two energy barriers on the potential-energy surface. The first transition near -182°C allows shifts in the backbone torsion angle from that defined by the global energy minimum designated off-trans to that corresponding to a statistical collection of torsion angles within the range trans ±30°. The second transition near -175°C allows the backbone torsion angle to explore the remainder of its torsional space. The sidechain dynamics follows a similar pattern. We suggest that the abrupt transition calculated here at -182°C for “gas.phase” PDHS corresponds to that observed for PDHS at -28°C in solution and at 42°C in the solid state.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seonghoon Jeong

Abstract Backgrounds: Enormous number of possible conformations in the protein structure simulation have led molecular dynamics researchers to be frustrated until now. Some methods with defects ended their experiments into failure. This made them fail to determine the structure and function of folded protein in stable state with the lowest potential energy. This apparently exist in nature. The purpose of resolving a protein folding pathway that follows protein backbone residues torsional inertia was accomplished. Results A new method, torsion angle modeling, was adopted focused on the rotation of dihedral angles. The potential energy was calculated by rotating torsion angles of the peptide with 8 residues. It was found that when moving in the order of torsional inertia, 8 residues swivel in sequence. Six passes were repeated to find the lowest value. Conclusion The protein backbone torsion angle plays very important role in predicting protein structure. Actually it was thousand times faster or more than others to get the obvious pathway.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shi Jun Ang ◽  
Wujie Wang ◽  
Daniel Schwalbe-Koda ◽  
Simon Axelrod ◽  
Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli

<div>Modeling dynamical effects in chemical reactions, such as post-transition state bifurcation, requires <i>ab initio</i> molecular dynamics simulations due to the breakdown of simpler static models like transition state theory. However, these simulations tend to be restricted to lower-accuracy electronic structure methods and scarce sampling because of their high computational cost. Here, we report the use of statistical learning to accelerate reactive molecular dynamics simulations by combining high-throughput ab initio calculations, graph-convolution interatomic potentials and active learning. This pipeline was demonstrated on an ambimodal trispericyclic reaction involving 8,8-dicyanoheptafulvene and 6,6-dimethylfulvene. With a dataset size of approximately</div><div>31,000 M062X/def2-SVP quantum mechanical calculations, the computational cost of exploring the reactive potential energy surface was reduced by an order of magnitude. Thousands of virtually costless picosecond-long reactive trajectories suggest that post-transition state bifurcation plays a minor role for the reaction in vacuum. Furthermore, a transfer-learning strategy effectively upgraded the potential energy surface to higher</div><div>levels of theory ((SMD-)M06-2X/def2-TZVPD in vacuum and three other solvents, as well as the more accurate DLPNO-DSD-PBEP86 D3BJ/def2-TZVPD) using about 10% additional calculations for each surface. Since the larger basis set and the dynamic correlation capture intramolecular non-covalent interactions more accurately, they uncover longer lifetimes for the charge-separated intermediate on the more accurate potential energy surfaces. The character of the intermediate switches from entropic to thermodynamic upon including implicit solvation effects, with lifetimes increasing with solvent polarity. Analysis of 2,000 reactive trajectories on the chloroform PES shows a qualitative agreement with the experimentally-reported periselectivity for this reaction. This overall approach is broadly applicable and opens a door to the study of dynamical effects in larger, previously-intractable reactive systems.</div>


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Shen ◽  
Zhi Yue ◽  
Helen Zgurskaya ◽  
Wei Chen

AcrB is the inner-membrane transporter of E. coli AcrAB-TolC tripartite efflux complex, which plays a major role in the intrinsic resistance to clinically important antibiotics. AcrB pumps a wide range of toxic substrates by utilizing the proton gradient between periplasm and cytoplasm. Crystal structures of AcrB revealed three distinct conformational states of the transport cycle, substrate access, binding and extrusion, or loose (L), tight (T) and open (O) states. However, the specific residue(s) responsible for proton binding/release and the mechanism of proton-coupled conformational cycling remain controversial. Here we use the newly developed membrane hybrid-solvent continuous constant pH molecular dynamics technique to explore the protonation states and conformational dynamics of the transmembrane domain of AcrB. Simulations show that both Asp407 and Asp408 are deprotonated in the L/T states, while only Asp408 is protonated in the O state. Remarkably, release of a proton from Asp408 in the O state results in large conformational changes, such as the lateral and vertical movement of transmembrane helices as well as the salt-bridge formation between Asp408 and Lys940 and other sidechain rearrangements among essential residues.Consistent with the crystallographic differences between the O and L protomers, simulations offer dynamic details of how proton release drives the O-to-L transition in AcrB and address the controversy regarding the proton/drug stoichiometry. This work offers a significant step towards characterizing the complete cycle of proton-coupled drug transport in AcrB and further validates the membrane hybrid-solvent CpHMD technique for studies of proton-coupled transmembrane proteins which are currently poorly understood. <p><br></p>


Author(s):  
Balaji Selvam ◽  
Ya-Chi Yu ◽  
Liqing Chen ◽  
Diwakar Shukla

<p>The SWEET family belongs to a class of transporters in plants that undergoes large conformational changes to facilitate transport of sugar molecules across the cell membrane. However, the structures of their functionally relevant conformational states in the transport cycle have not been reported. In this study, we have characterized the conformational dynamics and complete transport cycle of glucose in OsSWEET2b transporter using extensive molecular dynamics simulations. Using Markov state models, we estimated the free energy barrier associated with different states as well as 1 for the glucose the transport mechanism. SWEETs undergoes structural transition to outward-facing (OF), Occluded (OC) and inward-facing (IF) and strongly support alternate access transport mechanism. The glucose diffuses freely from outside to inside the cell without causing major conformational changes which means that the conformations of glucose unbound and bound snapshots are exactly same for OF, OC and IF states. We identified a network of hydrophobic core residues at the center of the transporter that restricts the glucose entry to the cytoplasmic side and act as an intracellular hydrophobic gate. The mechanistic predictions from molecular dynamics simulations are validated using site-directed mutagenesis experiments. Our simulation also revealed hourglass like intermediate states making the pore radius narrower at the center. This work provides new fundamental insights into how substrate-transporter interactions actively change the free energy landscape of the transport cycle to facilitate enhanced transport activity.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fortunatus C. Ezebuo ◽  
Ikemefuna C. Uzochukwu

Background: Sulfotransferase family comprises key enzymes involved in drug metabolism. Oxamniquine is a pro-drug converted into its active form by schistosomal sulfotransferase. The conformational dynamics of side-chain amino acid residues at the binding site of schistosomal sulfotransferase towards activation of oxamniquine has not received attention. Objective: The study investigated the conformational dynamics of binding site residues in free and oxamniquine bound schistosomal sulfotransferase systems and their contribution to the mechanism of oxamniquine activation by schistosomal sulfotransferase using molecular dynamics simulations and binding energy calculations. Methods: Schistosomal sulfotransferase was obtained from Protein Data Bank and both the free and oxamniquine bound forms were subjected to molecular dynamics simulations using GROMACS-4.5.5 after modeling it’s missing amino acid residues with SWISS-MODEL. Amino acid residues at its binding site for oxamniquine was determined and used for Principal Component Analysis and calculations of side-chain dihedrals. In addition, binding energy of the oxamniquine bound system was calculated using g_MMPBSA. Results: The results showed that binding site amino acid residues in free and oxamniquine bound sulfotransferase sampled different conformational space involving several rotameric states. Importantly, Phe45, Ile145 and Leu241 generated newly induced conformations, whereas Phe41 exhibited shift in equilibrium of its conformational distribution. In addition, the result showed binding energy of -130.091 ± 8.800 KJ/mol and Phe45 contributed -9.8576 KJ/mol. Conclusion: The results showed that schistosomal sulfotransferase binds oxamniquine by relying on hybrid mechanism of induced fit and conformational selection models. The findings offer new insight into sulfotransferase engineering and design of new drugs that target sulfotransferase.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 6141-6153
Author(s):  
Jianwei Cao ◽  
Yanan Wu ◽  
Haitao Ma ◽  
Zhitao Shen ◽  
Wensheng Bian

Quantum dynamics and ring polymer molecular dynamics calculations reveal interesting dynamical and kinetic behaviors of an endothermic complex-forming reaction.


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