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The role of conformational selection in the molecular recognition of the wild type and mutants XPA 67‐80 peptides by ERCC 1
Author(s) -
Fadda Elisa
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
proteins: structure, function, and bioinformatics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.699
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0134
pISSN - 0887-3585
DOI - 10.1002/prot.24825
Subject(s) - ercc1 , peptide , chemistry , mutant , molecular recognition , molecular dynamics , computational biology , biophysics , dna , biochemistry , biology , dna damage , molecule , nucleotide excision repair , gene , computational chemistry , organic chemistry
Molecular recognition is a fundamental step in the coordination of biomolecular pathways. Understanding how recognition and binding occur between highly flexible protein domains is a complex task. The conformational selection theory provides an elegant rationalization of the recognition mechanism, especially valid in cases when unstructured protein regions are involved. The recognition of a poorly structured peptide, namely XPA 67‐80 , by its target receptor ERCC1, falls in this challenging study category. The microsecond molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, discussed in this work, show that the conformational propensity of the wild type XPA 67‐80 peptide in solution supports conformational selection as the key mechanism driving its molecular recognition by ERCC1. Moreover, all the mutations of the XPA 67‐80 peptide studied here cause a significant increase of its conformational disorder, relative to the wild type. Comparison to experimental data suggests that the loss of the recognized structural motifs at the microscopic time scale can contribute to the critical decrease in binding observed for one of the mutants, further substantiating the key role of conformational selection in recognition. Ultimately, because of the high sequence identity and analogy in binding, it is conceivable that the conclusions of this study on the XPA 67‐80 peptide also apply to the ERCC1‐binding domain of the XPA protein. Proteins 2015; 83:1341–1351. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.