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Sequeiros-Borja C, Surpeta B, Thirunavukarasu AS, Dongmo Foumthuim CJ, Marchlewski I, Brezovsky J. Water will Find Its Way: Transport through Narrow Tunnels in Hydrolases. J Chem Inf Model 2024. [PMID: 38669675 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.4c00094] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/28/2024]
Abstract
An aqueous environment is vital for life as we know it, and water is essential for nearly all biochemical processes at the molecular level. Proteins utilize water molecules in various ways. Consequently, proteins must transport water molecules across their internal network of tunnels to reach the desired action sites, either within them or by functioning as molecular pipes to control cellular osmotic pressure. Despite water playing a crucial role in enzymatic activity and stability, its transport has been largely overlooked, with studies primarily focusing on water transport across membrane proteins. The transport of molecules through a protein's tunnel network is challenging to study experimentally, making molecular dynamics simulations the most popular approach for investigating such events. In this study, we focused on the transport of water molecules across three different α/β-hydrolases: haloalkane dehalogenase, epoxide hydrolase, and lipase. Using a 5 μs adaptive simulation per system, we observed that only a few tunnels were responsible for the majority of water transport in dehalogenase, in contrast to a higher diversity of tunnels in other enzymes. Interestingly, water molecules could traverse narrow tunnels with subangstrom bottlenecks, which is surprising given the commonly accepted water molecule radius of 1.4 Å. Our analysis of the transport events in such narrow tunnels revealed a markedly increased number of hydrogen bonds formed between the water molecules and protein, likely compensating for the steric penalty of the process. Overall, these commonly disregarded narrow tunnels accounted for ∼20% of the total water transport observed, emphasizing the need to surpass the standard geometrical limits on the functional tunnels to properly account for the relevant transport processes. Finally, we demonstrated how the obtained insights could be applied to explain the differences in a mutant of the human soluble epoxide hydrolase associated with a higher incidence of ischemic stroke.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carlos Sequeiros-Borja
- International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Warsaw 02-109, Poland
- Laboratory of Biomolecular Interactions and Transport, Department of Gene Expression, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań 61-614, Poland
| | - Bartlomiej Surpeta
- International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Warsaw 02-109, Poland
- Laboratory of Biomolecular Interactions and Transport, Department of Gene Expression, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań 61-614, Poland
| | - Aravind Selvaram Thirunavukarasu
- International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Warsaw 02-109, Poland
- Laboratory of Biomolecular Interactions and Transport, Department of Gene Expression, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań 61-614, Poland
| | | | - Igor Marchlewski
- International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Warsaw 02-109, Poland
- Laboratory of Biomolecular Interactions and Transport, Department of Gene Expression, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań 61-614, Poland
| | - Jan Brezovsky
- International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Warsaw 02-109, Poland
- Laboratory of Biomolecular Interactions and Transport, Department of Gene Expression, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań 61-614, Poland
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Abstract
Developing bioinspired artificial water channels may lead to the next-generation filtration membranes with ultra-high pore density and exclusive water permeability.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bing Gong
- Department of Chemistry
- University at Buffalo
- The State University of New York
- Buffalo
- USA
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