Urriolabeitia A, De Sancho D, López X. Influence of the Nonprotein Amino Acid Mimosine in Peptide Conformational Propensities from Novel Amber Force Field Parameters.
J Phys Chem B 2022;
126:2959-2967. [PMID:
35417161 PMCID:
PMC9059123 DOI:
10.1021/acs.jpcb.1c09911]
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Abstract
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Mimosine is a nonprotein
amino acid derived from plants known for
its ability to bind to divalent and trivalent metal cations such as
Zn2+, Ni2+, Fe2+, or Al3+. This results in interesting antimicrobial and anticancer properties,
which make mimosine a promising candidate for therapeutic applications.
One possibility is to incorporate mimosine into synthetic short peptide
drugs. However, how this amino acid affects the peptide structure
is not well understood, reducing our ability to design effective therapeutic
compounds. In this work, we used computer simulations to understand
this question. We first built parameters for the mimosine residue
to be used in combination with two classical force fields of the Amber
family. Then, we used atomistic molecular dynamics simulations with
the resulting parameter sets to evaluate the influence of mimosine
in the structural propensities for this amino acid. We compared the
results of these simulations with homologous peptides, where mimosine
is replaced by either phenylalanine or tyrosine. We found that the
strong dipole in mimosine induces a preference for conformations where
the amino acid rings are stacked over more extended conformations.
We validated our results using quantum mechanical calculations, which
provide a robust foundation for the outcome of our classical simulations.
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