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Tao YX. Mutations in melanocortin-4 receptor: From fish to men. PROGRESS IN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE 2022; 189:215-257. [PMID: 35595350 DOI: 10.1016/bs.pmbts.2022.03.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Abstract
Melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R), expressed abundantly in the hypothalamus, is a critical regulator of energy homeostasis, including both food intake and energy expenditure. Shortly after the publication in 1997 of the Mc4r knockout phenotypes in mice, including increased food intake and severe obesity, the first mutations in MC4R were reported in humans in 1998. Studies in the subsequent two decades have established MC4R mutation as the most common monogenic form of obesity, especially in early-onset severe obesity. Studies in animals, from fish to mammals, have established the conserved physiological roles of MC4R in all vertebrates in regulating energy balance. Drug targeting MC4R has been recently approved for treating morbid genetic obesity. How the MC4R can be exploited for animal production is highly worthy of active investigation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ya-Xiong Tao
- Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States.
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2
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Shokri M, Moradi S, Amini S, Shahlaei M, Seidi F, Saedi S. A novel amino cellulose derivative using ATRP method: Preparation, characterization, and investigation of its antibacterial activity. Bioorg Chem 2020; 106:104355. [PMID: 33223200 DOI: 10.1016/j.bioorg.2020.104355] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/11/2020] [Revised: 08/04/2020] [Accepted: 10/05/2020] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
In this study, we prepared a novel amino cellulose derivative (benzyl cellulose-g-poly [2-(N,N-Dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate]) via a homogeneous ATRP method. The successful synthesis of the novel amino cellulose was confirmed by FT-IR and 1H NMR. This study addressed the different characteristics of the prepared polymer including the thermal stability, solubility, and X-ray diffraction pattern. The antibacterial activity of the synthesized cellulose derivative was investigated using the diffusion disk method against both gram-negative (Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica) and gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis) bacteria. Based on the inhibition zone, it was confirmed that the prepared benzyl cellulose-g-PDMAEMA possesses acceptable antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, and Staphylococcus aureus while Bacillus subtilis is resistant to the prepared polymer. Also according to the inhibition zone, it was shown that benzyl cellulose-g-PDMAEMA has more impact on E. coli and Salmonella enterica than Staphylococcus aureus. Molecular dynamics simulation was also used to study the interaction of the synthesized cellulose derivative with a model membrane which presented atomistic details of the polymer-lipid interactions. According to the results obtained from the molecular dynamics simulation, the polymer was able to destabilize the structure of the membrane and clearly express its signs of degradation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mastaneh Shokri
- Department of Chemistry, Sanandaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran
| | - Sajad Moradi
- Nano Drug Delivery Research Center, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran
| | - Sabrieh Amini
- Department of Biology, Sanandaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran
| | - Mohsen Shahlaei
- Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, Faculty of Pharmacy, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran
| | - Farzad Seidi
- Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources, and Joint International Research Lab of Lignocellulosic Functional Materials, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China.
| | - Shahab Saedi
- Department of Chemistry, Sanandaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran.
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3
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Yan S, Peck JM, Ilgu M, Nilsen-Hamilton M, Lamm MH. Sampling Performance of Multiple Independent Molecular Dynamics Simulations of an RNA Aptamer. ACS OMEGA 2020; 5:20187-20201. [PMID: 32832772 PMCID: PMC7439393 DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.0c01867] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/22/2020] [Accepted: 07/22/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Using multiple independent simulations instead of one long simulation has been shown to improve the sampling performance attained with the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation method. However, it is generally not known how long each independent simulation should be, how many independent simulations should be used, or to what extent either of these factors affects the overall sampling performance achieved for a given system. The goal of the present study was to assess the sampling performance of multiple independent MD simulations, where each independent simulation begins from a different initial molecular conformation. For this purpose, we used an RNA aptamer that is 25 nucleotides long as a case study. The initial conformations of the aptamer are derived from six de novo predicted 3D structures. Each of the six de novo predicted structures is energy minimized in solution and equilibrated with MD simulations at high temperature. Ten conformations from these six high-temperature equilibration runs are selected as initial conformations for further simulations at ambient temperature. In total, we conducted 60 independent MD simulations, each with a duration of 100 ns, to study the conformation and dynamics of the aptamer. For each group of 10 independent simulations that originated from a particular de novo predicted structure, we evaluated the potential energy distribution of the RNA and used recurrence quantification analysis to examine the sampling of RNA conformational transitions. To assess the impact of starting from different de novo predicted structures, we computed the density of structure projection on principal components to compare the regions sampled by the different groups of ten independent simulations. The recurrence rate and dependence of initial conformation among the groups were also compared. We stress the necessity of using different initial configurations as simulation starting points by showing long simulations from different initial structures suffer from being trapped in different states. Finally, we summarized the sampling efficiency for the complete set of 60 independent simulations and determined regions of under-sampling on the potential energy landscape. The results suggest that conducting multiple independent simulations using a diverse set of de novo predicted structures is a promising approach to achieve sufficient sampling. This approach avoids undesirable outcomes, such as the problem of the RNA aptamer being trapped in a local minimum. For others wishing to conduct multiple independent simulations, the analysis protocol presented in this study is a guide for examining overall sampling and determining if more simulations are necessary for sufficient sampling.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shuting Yan
- Department
of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, United States
| | - Jason M. Peck
- Department
of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, United States
| | - Muslum Ilgu
- Roy
J Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, United States
- Aptalogic
Inc., Ames, Iowa 50014, United States
- Department
of Biological Sciences, Middle East Technical
University, Ankara, Ankara 06800, Turkey
| | - Marit Nilsen-Hamilton
- Roy
J Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, United States
- Aptalogic
Inc., Ames, Iowa 50014, United States
| | - Monica H. Lamm
- Department
of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, United States
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Moradi S, Nowroozi A, Shahlaei M. Shedding light on the structural properties of lipid bilayers using molecular dynamics simulation: a review study. RSC Adv 2019; 9:4644-4658. [PMID: 35520151 PMCID: PMC9060685 DOI: 10.1039/c8ra08441f] [Citation(s) in RCA: 56] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2018] [Revised: 03/12/2019] [Accepted: 01/16/2019] [Indexed: 12/20/2022] Open
Abstract
In recent years, a massive increase has been observed in the number of published articles describing accurate and reliable molecular dynamics simulations of lipid bilayers. This is due to several reasons, including the development of fast and efficient methods for treating long-range electrostatic interactions, significant progress in computer hardware, progress in atomistic simulation algorithms and the development of well-validated empirical molecular mechanical force fields. Although molecular dynamics is an effective approach for investigating different aspects of lipid bilayers, to the best of our knowledge, there is no review in the literature that explains the different analyses that can be carried out with membrane simulation. This review gives an overview about the some of the most important possible analyses, technical challenges, and existing protocols that can be performed on the biological membrane by molecular dynamics simulation. The reviewed analyses include the degree of membrane disruption, average area per lipid, probability distributions for the area per lipid molecule, membrane thickness, membrane area compressibility, lateral diffusion, rotational diffusion, order parameters, head group tilt, electron density profile, mass density profile, electrostatic potential profile, ordering of vicinity waters, number of hydrogen bonds, and radial distribution function.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sajad Moradi
- Nano Drug Delivery Research Center, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences Kermanshah Iran
| | - Amin Nowroozi
- Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, Faculty of Pharmacy, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences Kermanshah Iran
| | - Mohsen Shahlaei
- Medical Biology Research Center, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences Kermanshah Iran
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5
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Moradi S, Hosseini E, Abdoli M, Khani S, Shahlaei M. Comparative molecular dynamic simulation study on the use of chitosan for temperature stabilization of interferon αII. Carbohydr Polym 2019; 203:52-59. [DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2018.09.032] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/13/2018] [Revised: 09/08/2018] [Accepted: 09/17/2018] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
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6
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Tarenzi T, Calandrini V, Potestio R, Giorgetti A, Carloni P. Open Boundary Simulations of Proteins and Their Hydration Shells by Hamiltonian Adaptive Resolution Scheme. J Chem Theory Comput 2017; 13:5647-5657. [PMID: 28992702 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.7b00508] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Abstract
The recently proposed Hamiltonian adaptive resolution scheme (H-AdResS) allows the performance of molecular simulations in an open boundary framework. It allows changing, on the fly, the resolution of specific subsets of molecules (usually the solvent), which are free to diffuse between the atomistic region and the coarse-grained reservoir. So far, the method has been successfully applied to pure liquids. Coupling the H-AdResS methodology to hybrid models of proteins, such as the molecular mechanics/coarse-grained (MM/CG) scheme, is a promising approach for rigorous calculations of ligand binding free energies in low-resolution protein models. Toward this goal, here we apply for the first time H-AdResS to two atomistic proteins in dual-resolution solvent, proving its ability to reproduce structural and dynamic properties of both the proteins and the solvent, as obtained from atomistic simulations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Tarenzi
- Computation-Based Science and Technology Research Center CaSToRC, The Cyprus Institute , 20 Konstantinou Kavafi Street, 2121, Aglantzia, Nicosia, Cyprus
- Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences, Aachen University , Otto-Blumenthal-Straße, 52074 Aachen, Germany
| | - Vania Calandrini
- Computational Biomedicine, Institute for Advanced Simulation IAS-5, and Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine INM-9, Forschungszentrum Jülich , 52425 Jülich, Germany
| | - Raffaello Potestio
- Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research , Ackermannweg 10, 55128 Mainz, Germany
| | - Alejandro Giorgetti
- Computational Biomedicine, Institute for Advanced Simulation IAS-5, and Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine INM-9, Forschungszentrum Jülich , 52425 Jülich, Germany
- Department of Biotechnology, University of Verona , Ca' Vignal 1, Strada Le Grazie 15, 37134 Verona, Italy
| | - Paolo Carloni
- Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences, Aachen University , Otto-Blumenthal-Straße, 52074 Aachen, Germany
- Computational Biomedicine, Institute for Advanced Simulation IAS-5, and Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine INM-9, Forschungszentrum Jülich , 52425 Jülich, Germany
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7
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Ganesan A, Coote ML, Barakat K. Molecular dynamics-driven drug discovery: leaping forward with confidence. Drug Discov Today 2017; 22:249-269. [DOI: 10.1016/j.drudis.2016.11.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 133] [Impact Index Per Article: 19.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2016] [Revised: 09/22/2016] [Accepted: 11/01/2016] [Indexed: 12/11/2022]
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8
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Perez JJ, Tomas MS, Rubio-Martinez J. Assessment of the Sampling Performance of Multiple-Copy Dynamics versus a Unique Trajectory. J Chem Inf Model 2016; 56:1950-1962. [PMID: 27599150 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.6b00347] [Citation(s) in RCA: 43] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/28/2022]
Abstract
The goal of the present study was to ascertain the differential performance of a long molecular dynamics trajectory versus several shorter ones starting from different points in the phase space and covering the same sampling time. For this purpose, we selected the 16-mer peptide Bak16BH3 as a model for study and carried out several samplings in explicit solvent. These samplings included an 8 μs trajectory (sampling S1); two 4 μs trajectories (sampling S2); four 2 μs trajectories (sampling S3); eight 1 μs trajectories (sampling S4); 16 0.5 μs trajectories (sampling S5), and 80 0.1 μs trajectories (sampling S6). Moreover, the 8 μs trajectory was further extended to 16 μs to have reference values of the diverse properties measured. The diverse samplings were compared qualitatively and quantitatively. Among the former, we carried out a comparison of the conformational profiles of the peptide using cluster analysis. Moreover, we also gained insight into the interchange among these structures along the sampling process. Among the latter, we computed the number of new conformational patterns sampled with time using strings defined from the conformations attained by each of the residues in the peptide. We also compared the locations and depths of the obtained minima on the free energy surface using principal component analysis. Finally, we also compared the helical profiles per residue at the end of the sampling process. The results suggest that a few short molecular dynamics trajectories may provide better sampling than one unique trajectory. Moreover, this procedure can also be advantageous to avoid getting trapped in a local minimum. However, caution should be exercised since short trajectories need to be long enough to overcome local barriers surrounding the starting point and the required sampling time depends on the number of degrees of freedom of the system under study. An effective way to gain insight into the minimum MD trajectory length is to monitor the convergence of different structural features, as shown in the present work.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juan J Perez
- Department of Chemical Engineering, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya , Av. Diagonal 647, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - M Santos Tomas
- Department of Architecture Technology, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya , Av. Diagonal 649, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain
| | - Jaime Rubio-Martinez
- Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Barcelona and the Institut de Recerca en Quimica Teorica i Computacional (IQTCUB) , Marti i Franques 1, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain
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Ahmadi M, Nowroozi A, Shahlaei M. Constructing an atomic-resolution model of human P2X7 receptor followed by pharmacophore modeling to identify potential inhibitors. J Mol Graph Model 2015; 61:243-61. [PMID: 26298810 DOI: 10.1016/j.jmgm.2015.08.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2015] [Revised: 06/22/2015] [Accepted: 08/10/2015] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
The P2X purinoceptor 7 (P2X7R) is a trimeric ATP-activated ion channel gated by extracellular ATP. P2X7R has important role in numerous diseases including pain, neurodegeneration, and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. In this prospective, the discovery of small-molecule inhibitors for P2X7R as a novel therapeutic target has received considerable attention in recent years. At first, 3D structure of P2X7R was built by using homology modeling (HM) and a 50ns molecular dynamics simulation (MDS). Ligand-based quantitative pharmacophore modeling methodology of P2X7R antagonists were developed based on training set of 49 compounds. The best four-feature pharmacophore model, includes two hydrophobic aromatic, one hydrophobic and one aromatic ring features, has the highest correlation coefficient (0.874), cost difference (368.677), low RMSD (2.876), as well as it shows a high goodness of fit and enrichment factor. Consequently, some hit compounds were introduced as final candidates by employing virtual screening and molecular docking procedure simultaneously. Among these compounds, six potential molecule were identified as potential virtual leads which, as such or upon further optimization, can be used to design novel P2X7R inhibitors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mehdi Ahmadi
- Student Research Committee, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran
| | - Amin Nowroozi
- Pharmaceutical sciences Research Center, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran
| | - Mohsen Shahlaei
- Medical Biology Research Center, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran.
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