Quantum Simulations of the Structure and Binding of Glycopeptide Antibiotic Aglycons to Cell Wall Analogues

Potent and specific antibiotic combination therapy against Clostridioides difficile

Keratinicyclins and keratinimicins are recently discovered glycopeptide antibiotics. Keratinimicins show broad-spectrum activity against Gram-positive bacteria, while keratinicyclins form a new chemotype by virtue of an unusual oxazolidinone moiety and exhibit specific antibiosis against Clostridioides difficile. Here we report the mechanism of action of keratinicyclin B (KCB). We find that steric constraints preclude KCB from binding peptidoglycan termini. Instead, KCB inhibits C. difficile growth by binding wall teichoic acids (WTAs) and interfering with cell wall remodeling. A computational model, guided by biochemical studies, provides an image of the interaction of KCB with C. difficile WTAs and shows that the same H-bonding framework used by glycopeptide antibiotics to bind peptidoglycan termini is used by KCB for interacting with WTAs. Analysis of KCB in combination with vancomycin (VAN) shows highly synergistic and specific antimicrobial activity, and that nanomolar combinations of the two drugs are sufficient for complete growth inhibition of C. difficile, while leaving common commensal strains unaffected.

Conformationally Restricted Glycopeptide Backbone Inhibits Gas-Phase H/D Scrambling between Glycan and Peptide Moieties

Protein glycosylation is a common post-translational modification on extracellular proteins. The conformational dynamics of several glycoproteins have been characterized by hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS). However, it is, in most cases, not possible to extract information about glycan conformation and dynamics due to the general difficulty of separating the deuterium content of the glycan from that of the peptide (in particular, for O-linked glycans). Here, we investigate whether the fragmentation of protonated glycopeptides by collision-induced dissociation (CID) can be used to determine the solution-specific deuterium content of the glycan. Central to this concept is that glycopeptides can undergo a facile loss of glycans upon CID, thereby allowing for the determination of their masses. However, an essential prerequisite is that hydrogen and deuterium (H/D) scrambling can be kept in check. Therefore, we have measured the degree of scrambling upon glycosidic bond cleavage in glycopeptides that differ in the conformational flexibility of their backbone and glycosylation pattern. Our results show that complete scrambling precedes the glycosidic bond cleavage in normal glycopeptides derived from a glycoprotein; i.e., all labile hydrogens have undergone positional randomization prior to loss of the glycan. In contrast, the glycosidic bond cleavage occurs without any scrambling in the glycopeptide antibiotic vancomycin, reflecting that the glycan cannot interact with the peptide moiety due to a conformationally restricted backbone as revealed by molecular dynamics simulations. Scrambling is also inhibited, albeit to a lesser degree, in the conformationally restricted glycopeptides ristocetin and its pseudoaglycone, demonstrating that scrambling depends on an intricate interplay between the flexibility and proximity of the glycan and the peptide backbone.

Vancomycin: ligand recognition, dimerization and super-complex formation

The antibiotic vancomycin targets lipid II, blocking cell wall synthesis in Gram-positive bacteria. Despite extensive study, questions remain regarding how it recognizes its primary ligand and what is the most biologically relevant form of vancomycin. In this study, molecular dynamics simulation techniques have been used to examine the process of ligand binding and dimerization of vancomycin. Starting from one or more vancomycin monomers in solution, together with different peptide ligands derived from lipid II, the simulations predict the structures of the ligated monomeric and dimeric complexes to within 0.1 nm rmsd of the structures determined experimentally. The simulations reproduce the conformation transitions observed by NMR and suggest that proposed differences between the crystal structure and the solution structure are an artifact of the way the NMR data has been interpreted in terms of a structural model. The spontaneous formation of both back-to-back and face-to-face dimers was observed in the simulations. This has allowed a detailed analysis of the origin of the cooperatively between ligand binding and dimerization and suggests that the formation of face-to-face dimers could be functionally significant. The work also highlights the possible role of structural water in stabilizing the vancomycin ligand complex and its role in the manifestation of vancomycin resistance.

Influence of the charge state on the structures and interactions of vancomycin antibiotics with cell-wall analogue peptides: experimental and theoretical studies

Charge matters! The charge state significantly influences the conformation and the binding energy between vancomycin antibiotic and bacterial cell-wall analogue peptides (see figure). Surface-induced dissociation (SID) studies provide a quantitative comparison between the stabilities of different charge states of the complex.In this study we examined the effect of the charge state on the energetics and dynamics of dissociation of the noncovalent complex between the vancomycin and the cell-wall peptide analogue N(alpha),N(epsilon)-diacetyl-L-Lys-D-Ala-D-Ala (V-Ac(2)LKdAdA). The binding energies between the vancomycin and the peptide were obtained from the RRKM (Rice, Ramsperger, Kassel, Marcus) modeling of the time- and energy-resolved surface-induced dissociation (SID) experiments. Our results demonstrate that the stability of the complex towards fragmentation increases in the order: doubly protonated<singly protonated<deprotonated. Dissociation of the singly protonated and singly deprotonated complex is characterized by very large entropy effects, which indicate a substantial increase in the conformational flexibility of the resulting products. The experimental threshold energies of (1.75+/-0.08) eV ((40.3+/-1.8) kcal mol(-1)) and (1.34+/-0.08) eV ((30.9+/-1.8) kcal mol(-1)) obtained for the deprotonated and singly protonated complexes, respectively, are in excellent agreement with the results of density functional theory calculations. The increased stability of the deprotonated complex observed experimentally is attributed to the presence of three charged sites in the deprotonated complex, as compared with only one charged site in the singly protonated complex. The low binding energy of (0.93+/-0.04) eV ((21.4+/-0.9) kcal mol(-1)) obtained for the doubly protonated complex suggests that this ion is destabilized by Coulomb repulsion between the singly protonated vancomycin and the singly protonated peptide comprising the complex.

Structural determination of large molecules through the reassembly of optimized fragments

The accurate determination of the optimized structures of large molecules is, computationally quite expensive. As an alternate to the conventional approaches to structural optimization, we have explored the accuracy and speed-up obtained when variants of the fragmentation optimization and recombination method (FORM) are used. Specifically, the method was applied to eight prototypical molecules -n-decane, hexa-alanine, a long conjugate hydrocarbon molecule, a large polar conjugated molecule, large (5,5) armchair single-walled carbon nanotubes, a salen-aluminum complex and a multiply H-bonded system (two conformers of vancomycin aglycon with Di-N-acetyl-l-Lys-d-Ala-d-Ala - without optimizing the structure of the whole molecules. We find that FORM can predict the structure of these molecules with an acceptable accuracy, all at a computational cost that is 2-11 times less than conventional quantum mechanical methods at the Hartree-Fock (HF), density functional theory (DFT) and MP2 level of accuracy. FORM may therefore represent a viable approach for the fast structural predictions of large molecules.