Effect of Main and Side Chains on the Folding Mechanism of the Trp-Cage Miniprotein

Proteins that do not fold into their functional native state have been linked to diseases. In this study, the influence of the main and side chains of individual amino acids on the folding of the tryptophan cage (Trp-cage), a designed 20-residue miniprotein, was analyzed. For this purpose, we calculated the solvation free energy (SFE) contributions of individual atoms by using the 3D-reference interaction site model with the atomic decomposition method. The mechanism by which the Trp-cage is stabilized during the folding process was examined by calculating the total energy, which is the sum of the conformational energy and SFE. The folding process of the Trp-cage resulted in a stable native state, with a total energy that was 62.4 kcal/mol lower than that of the unfolded state. The solvation entropy, which is considered to be responsible for the hydrophobic effect, contributed 31.3 kcal/mol to structural stabilization. In other words, the contribution of the solvation entropy accounted for approximately half of the total contribution to Trp-cage folding. The hydrophobic core centered on Trp6 contributed 15.6 kcal/mol to the total energy, whereas the solvation entropy contribution was 6.3 kcal/mol. The salt bridge formed by the hydrophilic side chains of Asp9 and Arg16 contributed 10.9 and 5.0 kcal/mol, respectively. This indicates that not only the hydrophobic core but also the salt bridge of the hydrophilic side chains gain solvation entropy and contribute to stabilizing the native structure of the Trp-cage.

Ligand Binding Path Sampling Based on Parallel Cascade Selection Molecular Dynamics: LB-PaCS-MD

Parallel cascade selection molecular dynamics (PaCS-MD) is a rare-event sampling method that generates transition pathways between a reactant and product. To sample the transition pathways, PaCS-MD repeats short-time MD simulations from important configurations as conformational resampling cycles. In this study, PaCS-MD was extended to sample ligand binding pathways toward a target protein, which is referred to as LB-PaCS-MD. In a ligand-concentrated environment, where multiple ligand copies are randomly arranged around the target protein, LB-PaCS-MD allows for the frequent sampling of ligand binding pathways. To select the important configurations, we specified the center of mass (COM) distance between each ligand and the relevant binding site of the target protein, where snapshots generated by the short-time MD simulations were ranked by their COM distance values. From each cycle, snapshots with smaller COM distance values were selected as the important configurations to be resampled using the short-time MD simulations. By repeating conformational resampling cycles, the COM distance values gradually decreased and converged to constants, meaning that a set of ligand binding pathways toward the target protein was sampled by LB-PaCS-MD. To demonstrate relative efficiency, LB-PaCS-MD was applied to several proteins, and their ligand binding pathways were sampled more frequently than conventional MD simulations.

Selection Rules for Outliers in Outlier Flooding Method Regulate Its Conformational Sampling Efficiency

The outlier flooding method (OFLOOD) has been proposed as an enhanced conformational sampling method of proteins. In OFLOOD, rarely occurring states of proteins are detected as sparse conformational distributions (outliers) with a clustering algorithm. The detected outliers are intensively resampled with short-time molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. As a set of cycles, OFLOOD repeats selections of outliers and their conformational resampling. Herein, as an essential issue to be tackled to perform OFLOOD efficiently, a selection rule for outliers should be carefully specified. Generally, many outliers are detected from distributions on conformational subspaces with the clustering. Judging from its computational costs, it is unreasonable to select all the detected outliers upon the conformational resampling. Therefore, it is important to consider which outliers should be selected from the sparse distributions when restarting their short-time MD simulations with limited computational costs. In this sense, we investigated the conformational sampling efficiency of OFLOOD by changing the selection rules for outliers. To address the conformational sampling efficiency of OFLOOD depending on its selection rules, outliers to be resampled were selected by focusing their probability occurrences (populations of outliers). As a comparison, a random selection rule for outliers was also considered. Through the present assessment, the random selection of outliers showed the most efficient conformational sampling efficiency compared to the other OFLOOD trials using the biased selection rules, indicating that a variety of outliers should be selected and resampled during the OFLOOD cycles. In conclusion, the random outlier selection rule is the best strategy to perform OFLOOD efficiently.