Investigation of α-conotoxin unbinding using umbrella sampling

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• 作者：Rilei Yu ; ^{ryu@ouc.edu.cn" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Nargis Tabassum ; Tao Jiang ; ^{jiangtao@mail.ouc.edu.cn" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：α-Conotoxin ; Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor ; Umbrella sampling ; Potential of mean force
• 刊名：Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：15 February 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：26
• 期：4
• 页码：1296-1300
• 全文大小：2048 K

文摘

α-Conotoxins, a class of short and disulfide rich peptide toxins, specifically and potently block nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). In this study umbrella sampling was performed to study the unbinding pathways and potential of mean force (PMF) of α-conotoxin ImI and PNIA(A10L,D14K). Our results suggest that (i) the unbinding pathways of ImI and PNIA(A10L,D14K) are similar despite of their different disulfide framework and structure, and (ii) α-conotoxin unbinding requires large conformation perturbation of the C-loop and the backbone flexibility of the C-loop can affect the binding or unbinding kinetics of the α-conotoxins. In addition, (iii) umbrella sampling gave correct ranking of the binding affinities of ImI and PNIA(A10L,D14K) indicating its efficacy on prediction of the binding affinities of α-conotoxins and implicating its potential application in design of more potent α-conotoxin analogs.