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Atomic-resolution simulations predict a transition state for vesicle fusion defined by contact of a few lipid tails.

ABSTRACT: Membrane fusion is essential to both cellular vesicle trafficking and infection by enveloped viruses. While the fusion protein assemblies that catalyze fusion are readily identifiable, the specific activities of the proteins involved and nature of the membrane changes they induce remain unknown. Here, we use many atomic-resolution simulations of vesicle fusion to examine the molecular mechanisms for fusion in detail. We employ committor analysis for these million-atom vesicle fusion simulations to identify a transition state for fusion stalk formation. In our simulations, this transition state occurs when the bulk properties of each lipid bilayer remain in a lamellar state but a few hydrophobic tails bulge into the hydrophilic interface layer and make contact to nucleate a stalk. Additional simulations of influenza fusion peptides in lipid bilayers show that the peptides promote similar local protrusion of lipid tails. Comparing these two sets of simulations, we obtain a common set of structural changes between the transition state for stalk formation and the local environment of peptides known to catalyze fusion. Our results thus suggest that the specific molecular properties of individual lipids are highly important to vesicle fusion and yield an explicit structural model that could help explain the mechanism of catalysis by fusion proteins.

SUBMITTER: Kasson PM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2891707 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Atomic-resolution simulations predict a transition state for vesicle fusion defined by contact of a few lipid tails.

Kasson Peter M PM Lindahl Erik E Pande Vijay S VS

PLoS computational biology 20100624 6

Membrane fusion is essential to both cellular vesicle trafficking and infection by enveloped viruses. While the fusion protein assemblies that catalyze fusion are readily identifiable, the specific activities of the proteins involved and nature of the membrane changes they induce remain unknown. Here, we use many atomic-resolution simulations of vesicle fusion to examine the molecular mechanisms for fusion in detail. We employ committor analysis for these million-atom vesicle fusion simulations ...[more]

PMID: 20585620

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Project description:Targeted protein degradation (TPD) has emerged as a powerful approach for removing (rather than inhibiting) proteins implicated in diseases. A key step in TPD is the formation of an induced proximity complex where a degrader molecule recruits an E3 ligase to the protein of interest (POI), facilitating the transfer of ubiquitin to the POI and initiating the proteasomal degradation process. Here, we address three critical aspects of the TPD process using atomistic simulations: 1) formation of the ternary complex induced by a degrader molecule, 2) conformational heterogeneity of the ternary complex, and 3) degradation efficiency via the full Cullin Ring Ligase (CRL) macromolecular assembly. We combine experimental biophysical data---in this case hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS, which measures the solvent exposure of protein residues)---with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations aided by enhanced sampling techniques to accurately predict ternary complex structures at atomic resolution. We demonstrate improved efficiency, accuracy, and reliability in the ternary structure predictions of the bromodomain of the cancer target SMARCA2 with the E3 ligase VHL mediated by three different degrader molecules. The simulations accurately reproduce X-ray crystal structures -- including a new structure that we determined in this work (PDB ID: 7S4E) -- with root mean square deviations (RMSD) of 1.1 to 1.6 \r{A}. The simulations also reveal a structural ensemble of low-energy conformations of the ternary complex. Snapshots from these simulations are used as seeds for additional simulations, where we perform 7.1 milliseconds of aggregate simulation time using Folding@home. The detailed free energy surface captures the crystal structure conformation within a low-energy basin and is consistent with solution-phase experimental data (HDX-MS and SAXS). Finally, we graft a structural ensemble of the ternary complexes onto the full CRL and perform enhanced sampling simulations, which suggest that differences in degradation efficiency may be related to the proximity distribution of lysine residues on the POI relative to the E2-loaded ubiquitin. Several of the predicted ubiquitinated lysine residues have been validated through a ubiquitin mapping proteomics experiment. DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-33575-4

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Atomic-resolution simulations predict a transition state for vesicle fusion defined by contact of a few lipid tails.

Publications

Atomic-resolution simulations predict a transition state for vesicle fusion defined by contact of a few lipid tails.

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