A kinetic Monte Carlo approach to investigate antibiotic translocation through bacterial porins

Diffusion of molecules through nanopores under confinement: Time-scale bridging and crowding effects via Markov state model

Passive transport of molecules through nanopores is characterized by the interaction of molecules with pore internal walls and by a general crowding effect due to the constricted size of the nanopore itself, which limits the presence of molecules in its interior. The molecule-pore interaction is treated within the diffusion approximation by introducing the potential of mean force and the local diffusion coefficient for a correct statistical description. The crowding effect can be handled within the Markov state model approximation. By combining the two methods, one can deal with complex free energy surfaces taking into account crowding effects. We recapitulate the equations bridging the two models to calculate passive currents assuming a limited occupancy of the nanopore in a wide range of molecular concentrations. Several simple models are analyzed to clarify the consequences of the model. Eventually, a biologically relevant case of transport of an antibiotic molecule through a bacterial porin is used to draw conclusions (i) on the effects of crowding on transport of small molecules through biological channels, and (ii) to demonstrate its importance for modelling of cellular transport.

Ab Initio Spectroscopic Investigation of Pharmacologically Relevant Chiral Molecules: The Cases of Avibactam, Cephems, and Idelalisib as Benchmarks for Antibiotics and Anticancer Drugs

The ability to accurately measure or predict several physicochemical properties of molecules which play a role as active substances in drugs can be of strategic importance for pharmacological applications, in addition to its possible interest in fundamental research. Chirality is a relevant feature in the characterization of drug molecules: enantiomers can show different pharmacological activity and adverse effects. The ability to separate stereoisomers and to assign their absolute configuration can thus be crucial. Circular dichroism (CD) spectra are a useful tool to distinguish between enantiomers. In this work we apply an in-house developed code, based on an efficient DFT approach for circular dichroism, to fully characterize the molecular optical properties in the case of few selected fundamental molecules for current medical and pharmaceutical research, namely avibactam, as representative of non β-lactam inhibitors, two cephems (cefepime and cefoxitin), as examples of β-lactam antibiotics, and idelalisib, as a recent relevant anticancer active substance to treat major leukemias. For the above molecules, in addition to their optical absorption spectra, we calculate their CD spectra within state-of-the-art computational techniques. We then investigate both the conformational and chemical sensitivity of absorption and CD spectra for the chosen molecules. The outcomes of the present research could be of fundamental importance to gain additional information on molecules involved in therapeutic protocols for severe diseases or in drug design.

Rationalizing the permeation of polar antibiotics into Gram-negative bacteria

The increasing level of antibiotic resistance in Gram-negative bacteria, together with the lack of new potential drug scaffolds in the pipeline, make the problem of infectious diseases a global challenge for modern medicine. The main reason that Gram-negative bacteria are particularly challenging is the presence of an outer cell-protecting membrane, which is not present in Gram-positive species. Such an asymmetric bilayer is a highly effective barrier for polar molecules. Several protein systems are expressed in the outer membrane to control the internal concentration of both nutrients and noxious species, in particular: (i) water-filled channels that modulate the permeation of polar molecules and ions according to concentration gradients, and (ii) efflux pumps to actively expel toxic compounds. Thus, besides expressing specific enzymes for drugs degradation, Gram-negative bacteria can also resist by modulating the influx and efflux of antibiotics, keeping the internal concentration low. However, there are no direct and robust experimental methods capable of measuring the permeability of small molecules, thus severely limiting our knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that ultimately control the permeation of antibiotics through the outer membrane. This is the innovation gap to be filled for Gram-negative bacteria. This review is focused on the permeation of small molecules through porins, considered the main path for the entry of polar antibiotics into Gram-negative bacteria. A fundamental understanding of how these proteins are able to filter small molecules is a prerequisite to design/optimize antibacterials with improved permeation. The level of sophistication of modern molecular modeling algorithms and the advances in new computer hardware has made the simulation of such complex processes possible at the molecular level. In this work we aim to share our experience and perspectives in the context of a multidisciplinary extended collaboration within the IMI-Translocation consortium. The synergistic combination of structural data, in vitro assays and computer simulations has proven to give new insights towards the identification and description of physico-chemical properties modulating permeation. Once similar general rules are identified, we believe that the use of virtual screening techniques will be very helpful in searching for new molecular scaffolds with enhanced permeation, and that molecular modeling will be of fundamental assistance to the optimization stage.

A radiobiological model of radiotherapy response and its correlation with prognostic imaging variables

Radiobiological models of tumour control probability (TCP) can be personalized using imaging data. We propose an extension to a voxel-level radiobiological TCP model in order to describe patient-specific differences and intra-tumour heterogeneity. In the proposed model, tumour shrinkage is described by means of a novel kinetic Monte Carlo method for inter-voxel cell migration and tumour deformation. The model captures the spatiotemporal evolution of the tumour at the voxel level, and is designed to take imaging data as input. To test the performance of the model, three image-derived variables found to be predictive of outcome in the literature have been identified and calculated using the model's own parameters. Simulating multiple tumours with different initial conditions makes it possible to perform an in silico study of the correlation of these variables with the dose for 50% tumour control ([Formula: see text]) calculated by the model. We find that the three simulated variables correlate with the calculated [Formula: see text]. In addition, we find that different variables have different levels of sensitivity to the spatial distribution of hypoxia within the tumour, as well as to the dynamics of the migration mechanism. Finally, based on our results, we observe that an adequate combination of the variables may potentially result in higher predictive power.

Exploiting the porin pathway for polar compound delivery into Gram-negative bacteria

BACKGROUND

In Gram-negative bacteria, the outer-membrane represents an additional barrier for antibiotics to permeate inside pathogens. Our inability to come up with novel effective antibiotics mostly relies upon insufficient understanding of the molecular basis behind outer-membrane penetration.

RESULTS

Polar antibiotics can permeate through water-filled porins, such as OmpF and OmpC from Escherichia coli. Through molecular modeling, permeation of imipenem and meropenem was found to be strongly dependent upon capability of drugs to properly align their electric dipole to the internal electric field in the restricted region of the pore. Electrostatics differences between OmpF and OmpC, and modifications along a series of OmpC mutants from E. coli-resistant clinical strains identify a 'preorientation' region, which dramatically affects antibiotic pathway.

CONCLUSION

A novel perspective is presented, suggesting new molecular properties to be included in drug design.

A kinetic model for molecular diffusion through pores

The number of pathogens developing multiple drug resistance is ever increasing. The impact on healthcare systems is huge and the need for novel antibiotics as well a new way to develop them is urgent, especially against Gram-negative bacteria. The first defense of these bacteria is the outer membrane, where unspecific protein channels (porins) modulate nutrients passive diffusion. Also polar antibiotics enter through this path and down-regulation and/or mutation of porins are very common in drug resistant strains. Our inability to come up with novel effective antibiotics mostly relies upon the insufficient comprehension of the key molecular features enabling better penetration through porins. Molecular dynamics simulations offer an extraordinary tool in the study of the dynamics of biological systems; however, one of the major drawbacks of this method is that its use is currently restricted to study time scales of the order of microsecond. Enhanced sampling methods like Metadynamics have been recently used to investigate the diffusion of antibiotics through bacterial porins. The main limitation is that dynamical properties cannot be estimated because of the different potential that the systems under study are experiencing. Recently, the scope of Metadynamics has been extended. By applying an a posteriori analysis one can obtain rates of transitions and rate-limiting steps of the process under study, directly comparable with kinetic data extracted from electrophysiology experiments. In this work, we apply this method to the study of the permeability of Escherichia coli's OmpF with respect to Meropenem, finding good agreement with the residence time obtained analyzing experimental current noise. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Membrane Proteins edited by J.C. Gumbart and Sergei Noskov.

Molecular recognition of DNA by ligands: roughness and complexity of the free energy profile

Understanding the molecular mechanism by which probes and chemotherapeutic agents bind to nucleic acids is a fundamental issue in modern drug design. From a computational perspective, valuable insights are gained by the estimation of free energy landscapes as a function of some collective variables (CVs), which are associated with the molecular recognition event. Unfortunately the choice of CVs is highly non-trivial because of DNA's high flexibility and the presence of multiple association-dissociation events at different locations and/or sliding within the grooves. Here we have applied a modified version of Locally-Scaled Diffusion Map (LSDMap), a nonlinear dimensionality reduction technique for decoupling multiple-timescale dynamics in macromolecular systems, to a metadynamics-based free energy landscape calculated using a set of intuitive CVs. We investigated the binding of the organic drug anthramycin to a DNA 14-mer duplex. By performing an extensive set of metadynamics simulations, we observed sliding of anthramycin along the full-length DNA minor groove, as well as several detachments from multiple sites, including the one identified by X-ray crystallography. As in the case of equilibrium processes, the LSDMap analysis is able to extract the most relevant collective motions, which are associated with the slow processes within the system, i.e., ligand diffusion along the minor groove and dissociation from it. Thus, LSDMap in combination with metadynamics (and possibly every equivalent method) emerges as a powerful method to describe the energetics of ligand binding to DNA without resorting to intuitive ad hoc reaction coordinates.

A biosurfactant-sophorolipid acts in synergy with antibiotics to enhance their efficiency

Sophorolipids (SLs), biosurfactants with antimicrobial properties, have been tried to address the problem of antibiotic resistance. The synergistic action of SL and antibiotics was checked using standard microdilution and spread plate methods. With Staphylococcus aureus, SL-tetracycline combination achieved total inhibition before 4 h of exposure while tetracycline alone couldnot achieve total inhibition till the end of 6 h. The inhibition caused by exposure of bacterium to SL-tetracycline mixture was ~25% more as compared to SL alone. In spite of known robustness of gram-negative bacteria, SL-cefaclor mixture proved to be efficient against Escherichia coli which showed ~48% more inhibition within 2 h of exposure as compared to cefaclor alone. Scanning electron microscopy of the cells treated with mixture revealed bacterial cell membrane damage and pore formation. Moreover, SLs being a type of asymmetric bola, they are expected to form self-assemblies with unique functionality. This led to the speculation that SLs being amphiphilic in nature can span through the structurally alike cell membrane and facilitate the entry of drug molecules.

Molecular Dynamics Computer Simulations of Multidrug RND Efflux Pumps

Over-expression of multidrug efflux pumps of the Resistance Nodulation Division (RND) protein super family counts among the main causes for microbial resistance against pharmaceuticals. Understanding the molecular basis of this process is one of the major challenges of modern biomedical research, involving a broad range of experimental and computational techniques. Here we review the current state of RND transporter investigation employing molecular dynamics simulations providing conformational samples of transporter components to obtain insights into the functional mechanism underlying efflux pump-mediated antibiotics resistance in Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

The binding of antibiotics in OmpF porin

The structure of OmpF porin in complex with three common antibiotics (zwitterionic ampicillin, anionic ertapenem, and di-anionic carbenicillin) was determined using X-ray crystallography. The three antibiotics are found to bind within the extracellular and periplasmic pore vestibules, away from the narrow OmpF constriction zone. Using the X-ray structures as a starting point, nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations with an applied membrane voltage show that ionic current through the OmpF channel is blocked with bound ampicillin, but not with bound carbenicillin. The susceptibility of Escherichia coli expressing OmpF mutants to ampicillin and carbenicillin was also experimentally characterized using microbiologic assays. These results show that general diffusion by OmpF porins allows for transfer of molecules with varied charged states and give insights into the design of more efficient antibiotics. A better understanding of this mechanism will shed light on nature's way of devising channels able to enhance the transport of molecules through membranes.