Exploring signal transduction in heteromultimeric protein based on energy dissipation model

Molecular Dynamics-Based Allosteric Prediction Method to Design Key Residues in Threonine Dehydrogenase for Amino-Acid Production

Allosteric proteins are considered as one of the most critical targets to design cell factories via synthetic biology approaches. Here, we proposed a molecular dynamics-based allosteric prediction method (MBAP) to screen indirect-binding sites and potential mutations for protein re-engineering. Using this MBAP method, we have predicted new sites to relieve the allosteric regulation of threonine dehydrogenase (TD) by isoleucine. An obtained mutation P441L has been verified with the ability to significantly reduce the allosteric regulation of TD in vitro assays and with the fermentation application in vivo for amino-acid production. These findings have proved the MBAP method as an effective and efficient predicting tool to find new positions of the allosteric enzymes, thus opening a new path to constructing cell factories in synthetic biology.

Biomolecular Systems Engineering: Unlocking the Potential of Engineered Allostery via the Lactose Repressor Topology

Allosteric function is a critical component of many of the parts used to construct gene networks throughout synthetic biology. In this review, we discuss an emerging field of research and education, biomolecular systems engineering, that expands on the synthetic biology edifice-integrating workflows and strategies from protein engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science principles. We focus on the role of engineered allosteric communication as it relates to transcriptional gene regulators-i.e., transcription factors and corresponding unit operations. In this review, we (a) explore allosteric communication in the lactose repressor LacI topology, (b) demonstrate how to leverage this understanding of allostery in the LacI system to engineer non-natural BUFFER and NOT logical operations, (c) illustrate how engineering workflows can be used to confer alternate allosteric functions in disparate systems that share the LacI topology, and (d) demonstrate how fundamental unit operations can be directed to form combinational logical operations.