The molecular basis of gene regulation by Nuclear Factor-κB (NF-κB) transcription factors and their coregulators is not well understood. This family of transcription factors controls a number of essential subcellular processes. Human Pirin, a nonheme iron (Fe) binding protein, has been shown to modulate the binding affinity between p65 homodimeric NF-κB and κB DNA. However, the allosteric effect of the active Fe(III) form of Pirin on the DNA has not been established. Here, we use multiple microsecond-long molecular dynamics simulations to explore the conformational dynamics of the free DNA, the p65–DNA complex, and the Pirin–p65–DNA supramolecular complex. We show that only the Fe(III) form of Pirin enhances the affinity between p65 and the DNA in the Pirin–p65–DNA supramolecular complex, in agreement with experiments. Additionally, the results provide atomistic details of the effect of the active Fe(III) form of Pirin on the DNA upon binding to the p65–DNA complex. In general, unlike the Fe(II) form of Pirin, binding of the Fe(III) form of Pirin to the p65–DNA complex significantly alters both the conformational dynamics of the DNA and the interactions between p65 and the DNA. The results provide atomic level understanding of the modulation of the DNA as a result of a redox-specific Fe(II)/Fe(III) coregulation of NF-κB by Pirin, knowledge that is necessary to fully understand normal and aberrant subcellular processes and the role of a subtle single electron redox process in gene regulation.

Although the regulation of function of proteins by allosteric interactions has been identified in many subcellular processes, molecular switches are also known to induce long-range conformational changes in proteins. A less well understood molecular switch involving cis–trans isomerization of a peptidyl–prolyl bond could induce a conformational change directly to the backbone that is propagated to other parts of the protein. However, these switches are elusive and hard to identify because they are intrinsic to biomolecules that are inherently dynamic. Here, we explore the conformational dynamics and free energy landscape of the SH2 domain of interleukin-2-inducible T-cell or tyrosine kinase (ITK) to fully understand the conformational coupling between the distal cis–trans molecular switch and its binding pocket of the phosphotyrosine motif. We use multiple microsecond-long all-atom molecular dynamics simulations in explicit water for over a total of 60 μs. We show that cis–trans isomerization of the Asn286–Pro287 peptidyl–prolyl bond is directly coupled to the dynamics of the binding pocket of the phosphotyrosine motif, in agreement with previous NMR experiments. Unlike the cis state that is localized and less dynamic in a single free energy basin, the trans state samples two distinct conformations of the binding pocket—one that recognizes the phosphotyrosine motif and the other that is somewhat similar to that of the cis state. The results provide an atomic-level description of a less well understood allosteric regulation by a peptidyl–prolyl cis–trans molecular switch that could aid in the understanding of normal and aberrant subcellular processes and the identification of these elusive molecular switches in other proteins.

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation distinctly describes motions of biomolecules at high resolution and can potentially be used to explain allosteric mechanism in subcellular processes. Statistical methods are necessary to realize this potential because MD simulations generate a large volume of data and because the analysis is never efficient, objective, or thorough without using appropriate statistical approaches. Tracing the flow of information within a biomolecule requires not only a description of an overall mechanism but also a multiscale statistical description from atomic interactions to the overall mechanism. The foundation of this multiscale description, in general, is a measure of correlation between motions of atoms or residues, as reflected by dynamic cross-correlation, Pearson correlation, or mutual information. However, these correlations can be inadequate because they assume wide sense stationarity, which means that the instantaneous average and correlation of a particular property are time-independent. Consequently, these measures of correlation cannot account for correlation between motions of different frequencies, since frequency implies oscillation and variation over time. Here, we characterize the nonstationarity in the form of pure oscillatory instantaneous variance in the signed dihedral angular accelerations (SDAA) along the main chain of alanine tripeptide in MD simulations by power spectrum, corrected squared envelope spectrum (CSES), and cross-CSES. This oscillation has a physical interpretation of an oscillatory diffusion. The fraction of this oscillation in all motions is as high as about 40% at some frequencies. This shows that oscillatory instantaneous variance exists in the SDAA and that significant correlation may not be accounted for in current correlation analysis. This oscillation is also found to transmit between dihedral angles. These results could have implications in the understanding of the dynamics of biomolecules.

Structurally conserved water molecules are important for biomolecular stability, flexibility, and function. X-ray crystallographic studies of Pin1 have resolved a number of water molecules around the enzyme, including two highly conserved water molecules within the protein. The functional role of these localized water molecules remains unknown and unexplored. Pin1 catalyzes cis/trans isomerizations of peptidyl prolyl bonds that are preceded by a phosphorylated serine or threonine residue. Pin1 is involved in many subcellular signaling processes and is a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of several life threatening diseases. Here, we investigate the significance of these structurally conserved water molecules in the catalytic domain of Pin1 using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, free energy calculations, analysis of X-ray crystal structures, and circular dichroism (CD) experiments. MD simulations and free energy calculations suggest the tighter binding water molecule plays a crucial role in maintaining the integrity and stability of a critical hydrogen-bonding network in the active site. The second water molecule is exchangeable with bulk solvent and is found in a distinctive helix-turn-coil motif. Structural bioinformatics analysis of nonredundant X-ray crystallographic protein structures in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) suggest this motif is present in several other proteins and can act as a water site, akin to the calcium EF hand. CD experiments suggest the isolated motif is in a distorted PII conformation and requires the protein environment to fully form the α-helix-turn-coil motif. This study provides valuable insights into the role of hydration in the structural integrity of Pin1 that can be exploited in protein engineering and drug design.

Allosteric communication in proteins regulates a plethora of downstream processes in subcellular signaling pathways. Describing the effects of cooperative ligand binding on the atomic level is a key to understanding many regulatory processes involving biomolecules. Here, we use microsecond-long molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the allosteric mechanism of Pin1, a potential therapeutic target and a phosphorylated-Ser/Thr dependent peptidyl-prolyl cis–trans isomerase that regulates several subcellular processes and has been implicated in many diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s. Experimental studies suggest that the catalytic domain and the noncatalytic WW domain are allosterically coupled; however, an atomic level description of the dynamics associated with the interdomain communication is lacking. We show that binding of the substrate to the WW domain is directly coupled to the dynamics of the catalytic domain, causing rearrangement of the residue–residue contact dynamics from the WW domain to the catalytic domain. The binding affinity of the substrate in the catalytic domain is also enhanced upon binding of the substrate to the WW domain. Modulation of the dynamics of the catalytic domain upon binding of the substrate to the WW domain leads to prepayment of the entropic cost of binding the substrate to the catalytic domain. This study shows that Ile 28 at the interfacial region between the catalytic and WW domains is certainly one of the residues responsible for bridging the communication between the two domains. The results complement previous experiments and provide valuable atomistic insights into the role of dynamics and possible entropic contribution to the allosteric mechanism of proteins.

Detailed understanding of how conformational dynamics orchestrates function in allosteric regulation of recognition and catalysis remains ambiguous. Here, we simulate CypA using multiple-microsecond-long atomistic molecular dynamics in explicit solvent and carry out NMR experiments. We analyze a large amount of time-dependent multidimensional data with a coarse-grained approach and map key dynamical features within individual macrostates by defining dynamics in terms of residue–residue contacts. The effects of substrate binding are observed to be largely sensed at a location over 15 Å from the active site, implying its importance in allostery. Using NMR experiments, we confirm that a dynamic cluster of residues in this distal region is directly coupled to the active site. Furthermore, the dynamical network of interresidue contacts is found to be coupled and temporally dispersed, ranging over 4 to 5 orders of magnitude. Finally, using network centrality measures we demonstrate the changes in the communication network, connectivity, and influence of CypA residues upon substrate binding, mutation, and during catalysis. We identify key residues that potentially act as a bottleneck in the communication flow through the distinct regions in CypA and, therefore, as targets for future mutational studies. Mapping these dynamical features and the coupling of dynamics to function has crucial ramifications in understanding allosteric regulation in enzymes and proteins, in general.

The relationship among biomolecular structure, dynamics, and function is far from being understood, and the role of subtle, weak interactions in stabilizing different conformational states is even less well-known. The cumulative effect of these interactions has broad implications for biomolecular stability and recognition and determines the equilibrium distribution of the ensemble of conformations that are critical for function. Here, we accurately capture the stabilizing effects of weak CH···π interaction using an empirical molecular mechanics force field in excellent agreement with experiments. We show that the side chain of flanking C-terminal aromatic residues preferentially stabilize the cis isomer of the peptidyl-prolyl bond of the protein backbone through this weak interaction. Cis–trans isomerization of peptidyl-prolyl protein bond plays a pivotal role in many cellular processes, including signal transduction, substrate recognition, and many diseases. Although the cis isomer is relatively less stable than the trans isomer, aromatic side chains of neighboring residues can play a significant role in stabilizing the cis relative to the trans isomer. We carry out extensive regular and accelerated molecular dynamics simulations and establish an approach to simulate the pH profile of the cis/trans ratio in order to probe the stabilizing role of the CH···π interaction. The results agree very well with NMR experiments, provide detailed atomistic description of this crucial biomolecular interaction, and underscore the importance of weak stabilizing interactions in protein function.

Enzymes catalyze a plethora of chemical reactions that are tightly regulated and intricately coupled in biology. Catalysis of phosphorylation-dependent cis–trans isomerization of peptidyl-prolyl bonds, which act as conformational switches in regulating many post-phosphorylation processes, is considered to be one of the most critical. Pin1 is a cis–trans isomerase of peptidyl-prolyl(ω-) bonds of phosphorylated-Ser/Thr-Pro motifs and has been implicated in many diseases. Structural and experimental studies are still unable to resolve the mechanistic role and protonation states of two adjacent histidines (His59 and His157) and a cysteine (Cys113) in the active site of Pin1. Here, we show that the protonation state of Cys113 mediates a dynamic hydrogen-bonding network in the active site of Pin1, involving the two adjacent histidines and several other residues that are highly conserved and necessary for catalysis. We have used detailed free energy calculations and molecular dynamics simulations, complementing previous experiments, to resolve the ambiguities in the orientations of the histidines and protonation states of these key active site residues, details that are critical for fully understanding the mechanism of Pin1 and necessary for developing potent inhibitors. Importantly, Cys113 is shown to alternate between the unprotonated and neutral states, unprotonated in free Pin1 and neutral in substrate-bound Pin1. Our results are consistent with experiments and provide an explanation for the chemical reactivity of free Pin1 that is suggested to be necessary for the regulation of the enzyme.

Molecular dynamics simulations can provide valuable atomistic insights into biomolecular function. However, the accuracy of molecular simulations on general-purpose computers depends on the time scale of the events of interest. Advanced simulation methods, such as accelerated molecular dynamics, have shown tremendous promise in sampling the conformational dynamics of biomolecules, where standard molecular dynamics simulations are nonergodic. Here we present a sampling method based on accelerated molecular dynamics in which rotatable dihedral angles and nonbonded interactions are boosted separately. This method (RaMD-db) is a different implementation of the dual-boost accelerated molecular dynamics, introduced earlier. The advantage is that this method speeds up sampling of the conformational space of biomolecules in explicit solvent, as the degrees of freedom most relevant for conformational transitions are accelerated. We tested RaMD-db on one of the most difficult sampling problems – protein folding. Starting from fully extended polypeptide chains, two fast folding α-helical proteins (Trpcage and the double mutant of C-terminal fragment of Villin headpiece) and a designed β-hairpin (Chignolin) were completely folded to their native structures in very short simulation time. Multiple folding/unfolding transitions could be observed in a single trajectory. Our results show that RaMD-db is a promisingly fast and efficient sampling method for conformational transitions in explicit solvent. RaMD-db thus opens new avenues for understanding biomolecular self-assembly and functional dynamics occurring on long time and length scales.Keywords: accelerated molecular dynamics; aMD; Chignolin; enhanced conformational sampling method; protein folding; RaMD; Trp-cage;

Human Cyclophilin A (CypA) catalyzes cis–trans isomerization of the prolyl peptide ω-bond in proteins and is involved in many subcellular processes. CypA has, therefore, been identified as a potential drug target in many diseases, and the development of potent inhibitors with high selectivity is a key objective. In computer-aided drug design, selectivity is improved by taking into account the inherent flexibility of the receptor. However, the relevant receptor conformations to focus on in order to develop highly selective inhibitors are not always obvious from available X-ray crystal structures or ensemble of conformations generated using molecular dynamics simulations. Here, we show that the conformation of the active site of CypA varies as the substrate configuration changes during catalytic turnover. We have analyzed the principal modes of the active site dynamics of CypA from molecular dynamics simulations to show that similar ensembles of enzyme conformations recognize diverse inhibitors and bind the different configurations of the peptide substrate. Small nonpeptidomimetic inhibitors with varying activity are recognized by enzyme ensembles that are similar to those that tightly bind the transition state and cis configurations of the substrate. Our results suggest that enzyme–substrate ensembles are more relevant in structure-based drug design for CypA than free enzyme. Of the vast conformational space of the free enzyme, the enzyme conformations of the tightly bound enzyme–substrate complexes are the most important for catalysis. Therefore, functionalizing lead compounds to optimize their interactions with the enzyme’s conformational ensemble bound to the substrate in the cis or the transition state could lead to more potent inhibitors.

Human peptidyl–prolyl cis–trans isomerase NIMA-interacting 1 (Pin1) is an essential enzyme in numerous phosphorylation-dependent regulatory pathways and has been implicated in many diseases, including cancer and Alzheimers. Pin1 specifically catalyzes cis–trans isomerization of prolyl–peptide bonds preceded by phosphorylated serine or phosphorylated threonine in its protein substrates. Yet, little is known about the catalytic mechanism of Pin1 in atomistic detail. Here, we present results from accelerated molecular dynamics simulations to show that catalysis occurs along a restricted path of the backbone configuration of the substrate, selecting out specific conformations of the substrate in the active site of Pin1. We show that the dynamics of Pin1 and the enzyme–substrate interactions are intricately coupled to isomerization during catalysis. The strength of the interactions between the phosphate binding pocket of Pin1 and the phosphate moiety of the substrate is dictated by the state of the substrate during catalysis. We also show that the transition-state configuration of the substrate binds better than the cis and trans states to the catalytic domain of Pin1, suggesting that Pin1 catalyzes its substrate by noncovalently stabilizing the transition state. These results suggest an atomistic detail understanding of the catalytic mechanism of Pin1 that is necessary for the design of novel inhibitors and the treatment of several diseases.

In enhanced sampling techniques, the precision of the reweighted ensemble properties is often decreased due to large variation in statistical weights and reduction in the effective sampling size. To abate this reweighting problem, here, we propose a general accelerated molecular dynamics (aMD) approach in which only the rotatable dihedrals are subjected to aMD (RaMD), unlike the typical implementation wherein all dihedrals are boosted (all-aMD). Nonrotatable and improper dihedrals are marginally important to conformational changes or the different rotameric states. Not accelerating them avoids the sharp increases in the potential energies due to small deviations from their minimum energy conformations and leads to improvement in the precision of RaMD. We present benchmark studies on two model dipeptides, Ace-Ala-Nme and Ace-Trp-Nme, simulated with normal MD, all-aMD, and RaMD. We carry out a systematic comparison between the performances of both forms of aMD using a theory that allows quantitative estimation of the effective number of sampled points and the associated uncertainty. Our results indicate that, for the same level of acceleration and simulation length, as used in all-aMD, RaMD results in significantly less loss in the effective sample size and, hence, increased accuracy in the sampling of φ–ψ space. RaMD yields an accuracy comparable to that of all-aMD, from simulation lengths 5 to 1000 times shorter, depending on the peptide and the acceleration level. Such improvement in speed and accuracy over all-aMD is highly remarkable, suggesting RaMD as a promising method for sampling larger biomolecules.

Despite growing evidence suggesting the importance of enzyme conformational dynamics (ECD) in catalysis, a consensus on how precisely ECD influences the chemical step and reaction rates is yet to be reached. Here, we characterize ECD in Cyclophilin A, a well-studied peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase, using normal and accelerated, atomistic molecular dynamics simulations. Kinetics and free energy landscape of the isomerization reaction in solution and enzyme are explored in unconstrained simulations by allowing significantly lower torsional barriers, but in no way compromising the atomistic description of the system or the explicit solvent. We reveal that the reaction dynamics is intricately coupled to enzymatic motions that span multiple timescales and the enzyme modes are selected based on the energy barrier of the chemical step. We show that Kramers’ rate theory can be used to present a clear rationale of how ECD affects the reaction dynamics and catalytic rates. The effects of ECD can be incorporated into the effective diffusion coefficient, which we estimate to be about ten times slower in enzyme than in solution. ECD thereby alters the preexponential factor, effectively impeding the rate enhancement. From our analyses, the trend observed for lower torsional barriers can be extrapolated to actual isomerization barriers, allowing successful prediction of the speedup in rates in the presence of CypA, which is in notable agreement with experimental estimates. Our results further reaffirm transition state stabilization as the main effect in enhancing chemical rates and provide a unified view of ECD’s role in catalysis from an atomistic perspective.

The precise catalytic mechanism of peptidyl–prolyl cis–trans isomerases (PPIases) has been elusive, despite many experimental and computational studies. The more than 5 orders of magnitude speedup achieved in catalysis by cyclophilin A (CypA) has been attributed to several factors, including substrate desolvation, enzyme dynamics, and preferential binding of the transition state. Here, we explore the conformational space of a substrate analogue of CypA using accelerated molecular dynamics, free in solution and in the active site of CypA, in order to probe its conformational interconversion during catalysis. We show that the undemanding exchange of the free substrate between β- and α-helical regions is lost in the active site of the enzyme, where it is mainly in the β-region. Our results suggest that the loss in conformational entropy at the transition state relative to the cis and trans states in the free substrate is decreased in the complex. This relative change in conformational entropy contributes favorable to the free energy of stabilizing the transition state by CypA. We also show that the ensuing intramolecular polarization, as a result of the loss in pseudo double bond character of the peptide bond at the transition state, contributes only about −1.0 kcal/mol to stabilizing the transition state. This relatively small contribution demonstrates that routinely used fixed charge classical force fields can reasonably describe these types of biological systems. Our results provide further insights into the mechanism of CypA, a member of a poorly understood family of enzymes that are central to many biological processes.

The cis−trans isomerization of peptide bonds is very slow, occurring in hundreds of seconds. Kinetic studies of such processes using straightforward molecular dynamics are currently not possible. Here, we use Kramers’ rate theory in the high friction regime in combination with accelerated molecular dynamics in explicit solvent to successfully retrieve the normal rate of cis to trans switching in the glycyl−prolyl dipeptide. Our approach bypasses the time-reweighting problem of the hyperdynamics scheme, wherein the addition of the bias potential alters the transition state regions and avoids an accurate estimation of kinetics. By performing accelerated molecular dynamics at a few different levels of acceleration, the rate of isomerization is enhanced as much as 1010 to 1011 times. Remarkably, the normal rates obtained by simply extrapolating to zero bias are within an order of experimental estimates. This provides validation from a kinetic standpoint of the ω torsional parameters of the AMBER force field that were recently revised by matching to experimentally measured equilibrium properties. We also provide a comparative analysis of the performance of the widely used water models, i.e., TIP3P and SPC/E, in estimating the kinetics of cis−trans isomerization. Furthermore, we show that the dynamic properties of bulk water can be corrected by adjusting the collision frequency in a Langevin thermostat, which then allows for better reproduction of cis−trans isomerization kinetics and a closer agreement of rates between experiments and simulations.

Post-translational phosphorylation and the related conformational changes in signaling proteins are responsible for regulating a wide range of subcellular processes. Human Pin1 is central to many of these cell signaling pathways in normal and aberrant subcellular processes, catalyzing cis–trans isomerization of the peptide ω-bond in phosphorylated serine/threonine-proline motifs in many proteins. Pin1 has therefore been identified as a possible drug target in many diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s. The effects of phosphorylation on Pin1 substrates, and the atomistic basis for Pin1 recognition and catalysis, are not well understood. Here, we determine the conformational consequences of phosphorylation on Pin1 substrate analogues and the mechanism of recognition by the catalytic domain of Pin1 using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. We show that phosphorylation induces backbone conformational changes on the peptide substrate analogues. We also show that Pin1 recognizes specific conformations of its substrate by conformational selection. Furthermore, dynamical correlated motions in the free Pin1 enzyme are present in the enzyme of the enzyme–substrate complex when the substrate is in the transition state configuration, suggesting that these motions play significant roles during catalytic turnover. These results provide a detailed atomistic picture of the mechanism of Pin1 recognition that can be exploited for drug design purposes and further our understanding of the synergistic complexities of post-translational phosphorylation and cis–trans isomerization.

Water plays a very important role in the dynamics and function of proteins. Apart from protein−protein and protein−water interactions, protein motions are accompanied by the formation and breakage of hydrogen-bonding network of the surrounding water molecules. This ordering and reordering of water also adds to the underlying roughness of the energy landscape of proteins and thereby alters their dynamics. Here, we extract the contribution of water to the ruggedness (in terms of an energy scale ε) of the energy landscape from molecular dynamics simulations of a peptide substrate analogue of prolyl cis−trans isomerases. In order to do so, we develop and implement a model based on the position space analog of the Ornstein−Uhlenbeck process and Zwanzig’s theory of diffusion on a rough potential. This allows us to also probe an important property of the widely used atomistic simulation water models that directly affects the dynamics of biomolecular systems and highlights the importance of the choice of the water model in studying protein dynamics. We show that water contributes an additional roughness to the energy landscape. At lower temperatures this roughness, which becomes comparable to kBT, can considerably slow down protein dynamics. These results also have much broader implications for the function of some classes of enzymes, since the landscape topology of their substrates may change upon moving from an aqueous environment into the binding site.

The active site of many enzymes is well-protected from solution by a gate. The opening and closing of these gates provide controlled access and could be the rate-limiting steps in catalytic processes. The gating mechanism of an enzyme is therefore very important in gaining broader insight into the entire catalytic process. However, the entrance to active sites and let alone the gating mechanisms are not always obvious from X-ray crystal structures of proteins. Here, we have proposed and quantitatively characterized an alternative gating mechanism controlled by a cluster of hydrophobic residues located on the solvent accessible surface of choline oxidase. We show that the opening and closing of the gate are very fast, and diffusion of choline to the active site is also fast and is partly controlled by the electrostatic potential of the enzyme. Using all-atom molecular dynamics and Brownian dynamics simulations, complete analyses of the mechanism of opening and closing of the gate, the rate of collision of the substrate with the enzyme, and the rate of formation of the complex have been conducted.

Improving the accuracy of molecular mechanics force field parameters for atomistic simulations of proteins and nucleic acids has been an ongoing effort. The availability of computer power and improved methodologies for conformational sampling has allowed the assessment of these parameters by comparing the free energies calculated from molecular dynamic (MD) simulations and those measured from thermodynamic experiments. Here, we focus on testing and optimizing the AMBER force field parameters for the ω dihedral, which represents rotation around the peptide bond of proteins. Due to the very slow isomerization rate of the peptide bond, it is not possible to sample the phase space with standard MD simulations. We therefore employed an accelerated MD method in explicit water in which the original Hamiltonian is modified to speed up conformational sampling and the correct canonical distribution is recaptured. Using well-studied model systems for the peptide and peptidyl prolyl bonds, we discovered that the AMBER ω dihedral parameters underestimated experimentally measured activation free energy barriers for cis/trans conversion as well as failed to reproduce the free energy difference between the two isomers. We reoptimized the original AMBER ω dihedral parameters and further validated their transferability on several experimentally studied dipeptides. The revised set of parameters successfully reproduced the cis/trans equilibria and free energy barriers within experimental and simulation errors. We also investigated the structures of the transition state and cis/trans isomers of prolyl peptide bonds in terms of pyramidality, a measure of the puckering of the prolyl ring. We observed, as expected from quantum mechanical studies, significant bidirectional, out-of-plane motions of prolyl nitrogen in the transition state.

Enzyme catalysis is central to almost all biochemical processes, speeding up rates of reactions to biological relevant timescales. Enzymes make use of a large ensemble of conformations in recognizing their substrates and stabilizing the transition states, due to the inherent dynamical nature of biomolecules. The exact role of these diverse enzyme conformations and the interplay between enzyme conformational dynamics and catalysis is, according to the literature, not well understood. Here, we use molecular dynamics simulations to study human cyclophilin A (CypA), in order to understand the role of enzyme motions in the catalytic mechanism and recognition. Cyclophilin A is a tractable model system to study using classical simulation methods, because catalysis does not involve bond formation or breakage. We show that the conformational dynamics of active site residues of substrate-bound CypA is inherent in the substrate-free enzyme. CypA interacts with its substrate via conformational selection as the configurations of the substrate changes during catalysis. We also show that, in addition to tight intermolecular hydrophobic interactions between CypA and the substrate, an intricate enzyme-substrate intermolecular hydrogen-bonding network is extremely sensitive to the configuration of the substrate. These enzyme-substrate intermolecular interactions are loosely formed when the substrate is in the reactant and product states and become well formed and reluctant to break when the substrate is in the transition state. Our results clearly suggest coupling among enzyme-substrate intermolecular interactions, the dynamics of the enzyme, and the chemical step. This study provides further insights into the mechanism of peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerases and the general interplay between enzyme conformational dynamics and catalysis.

Pirin is an iron (Fe)-dependent regulatory protein of nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) transcription factors. Binding studies have suggested that the oxidative state of iron plays a crucial role in modulating the binding of Pirin to NF-κB p65, in turn enhancing the binding of p65 to DNA. The Fe(III) form of Pirin is the active form and binds to NF-κB, whereas the Fe(II) form does not bind to NF-κB. However, the surprising consequence of a single charge perturbation in the functional modulation of NF-κB is not well understood. Here, we use quantum mechanical calculations and microsecond-long molecular dynamics simulations to explore the free-energy landscapes of the Fe(II) and Fe(III) forms of Pirin. We show that the restricted conformational space and electrostatic complementarity of the Fe(III) form of Pirin are crucial for binding and regulation of NF-κB. Our results suggest that a subtle single-electron redox trigger could significantly modulate the conformational dynamics and electrostatics of proteins in subcellular allosteric regulatory processes.Topics: Conformation; Electric properties; Free energy; Molecular dynamics simulation; Proteins; Quantum mechanics; Quantum mechanics; Redox reaction; Redox reaction;