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Glassy dynamics in mutant huntingtin proteins

Authors: Hongsuk Kang; Binquan Luan; Ruhong Zhou;

Glassy dynamics in mutant huntingtin proteins

Abstract

Causative to the neurodegenerative Huntington’s disease (HD), a mutational huntingtin (HTT) protein consists of an unusual expansion on the poly-glutamine (polyQ) region in the first exon (exon-1) domain. Despite its significance on HD progression, the structural role of the exon-1 with the polyQ region is still elusive. As HTT is an intrinsically disordered protein (IDP), a large ensemble of various conformations (instead of a mostly single native conformation) is required to characterize its structural properties and to infer biological functions, which is challenging even for the most state-of-the-art experimental techniques. For this reason, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with enhanced sampling techniques are ideal to compliment experiment on collecting such a large ensemble of thermodynamically accessible structures. Here, we performed large-scale temperature replica-exchange MD (T-REMD) simulations on the exon-1 with an illustration on the necessity of using T-REMD instead of unbiased regular MD. By comparing T-REMD data and unbiased MD data, we discovered that (1) the dynamics of polyQ regions are extremely sluggish and glassy at the room temperature and the relaxation of the system cannot be achieved within a reasonable amount of time without utilizing an enhanced sampling method and (2) an ensemble of protein structures containing the surprising cis-peptide bonds in the proline-rich domain can be obtained at much elevated temperatures. Our results may provide valuable insights for future studies on the HTT as well as other IDPs using the T-REMD method.

Related Organizations
Keywords

Protein Conformation, alpha-Helical, Huntingtin Protein, Proline, Temperature, Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Intrinsically Disordered Proteins, Isomerism, Protein Domains, Mutation, Protein Conformation, beta-Strand, Amino Acid Sequence, Peptides

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
9
Top 10%
Average
Average
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