How ATP suppresses the fibrillation of amyloid peptides: analysis of the free-energy contributions.

Recent experiments have revealed that adenosine triphosphate (ATP) suppresses the fibrillation of amyloid peptides - a process closely linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Apart from the adsorption of ATP onto amyloid peptides, the molecular understanding is still limited, leaving the underlying mechanism for the fibrillation suppression by ATP largely unclear, especially in regards to the molecular energetics. Here we provide an explanation at the molecular scale by quantifying the free energies using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. We found that the changes of the free energies due to the addition of ATP lead to a significant equilibrium shift towards monomeric peptides in agreement with experiments. Despite ATP being a highly charged species, the decomposition of the free energies reveals that the van der Waals interactions with the peptide are decisive in determining the relative stabilization of the monomeric state. While the phosphate moiety exhibits strong electrostatic interactions, the compensation by the water solvent results in a minor, overall Coulomb contribution. Our quantitative analysis of the free energies identifies which intermolecular interactions are responsible for the suppression of the amyloid fibril formation by ATP and offers a promising method to analyze the roles of similarly complex cosolvents in aggregation processes.

Arginine-rich cell-penetrating peptides induce membrane multilamellarity and subsequently enter via formation of a fusion pore.

Arginine-rich cell-penetrating peptides do not enter cells by directly passing through a lipid membrane; they instead passively enter vesicles and live cells by inducing membrane multilamellarity and fusion. The molecular picture of this penetration mode, which differs qualitatively from the previously proposed direct mechanism, is provided by molecular dynamics simulations. The kinetics of vesicle agglomeration and fusion by an iconic cell-penetrating peptide-nonaarginine-are documented via real-time fluorescence techniques, while the induction of multilamellar phases in vesicles and live cells is demonstrated by a combination of electron and fluorescence microscopies. This concert of experiments and simulations reveals that the identified passive cell penetration mechanism bears analogy to vesicle fusion induced by calcium ions, indicating that the two processes may share a common mechanistic origin.

Relationship between nonlinear pressure-induced chemical shift changes and thermodynamic parameters.

NMR chemical shift analysis is a powerful method to investigate local changes in the environment of the observed nuclear spin of a polypeptide that are induced by application of high hydrostatic pressure. Usually, in the fast exchange regime, the pressure dependence of chemical shifts is analyzed by a second order Taylor expansion providing the first- and second-order pressure coefficient B1 and B2. The coefficients then are interpreted in a qualitative manner. We show here that in a two-state model, the ratio of B2/B1 is related to thermodynamic parameters, namely the ratio of the difference of compressibility factors Δß' and partial molar volumes ΔV. The analysis is applied to the random-coil model peptides Ac-Gly-Gly-Xxx-Ala-NH2, with Xxx being one of the 20 proteinogenic amino acids. The analysis gives an average Δß'/ΔV ratio of 1.6 GPa(-1) provided the condition |ΔG(0)| ≪ 2RT holds for the difference of the Gibbs free energies (ΔG(0)) of the two states at the temperature (T0) and the pressure (p0). The amide proton and nitrogen B2/B1 of a given amino acid Xxx are strongly correlated, indicating that their pressure-dependent chemical shift changes are due to the same thermodynamic process. As a possible physical mechanism providing a two-state model, the hydrogen bonding of water with the corresponding amide protein was simulated for isoleucine in position Xxx. The obtained free energy could satisfy the relation |ΔG(0)| ≪ 2RT. The derived relation was applied to the ß-amyloid peptide Aß and the phosphocarrier protein HPr from S. carnosus. For the transition of state 1 to state 2' of Aß, the derived relation of B2/B1 to Δß'/ΔV can be confirmed experimentally. The HPr protein is characterized by substantially higher negative B2/B1 values than those found in the tetrapeptides with an average value of approximately -5.1 GPa(-1) (Δß'/ΔV of 5.1 GPa(-1) provided |ΔG(0)| ≪ 2RT holds). Qualitatively, the B2/B1 ratio can be used to predict regions of the HPr protein involved in the interaction with enzyme I or HPr-kinase/phosphatase.

On the relationship between peptide adsorption resistance and surface contact angle: a combined experimental and simulation single-molecule study.

The force-induced desorption of single peptide chains from mixed OH/CH(3)-terminated self-assembled monolayers is studied in closely matched molecular dynamics simulations and atomic force microscopy experiments with the goal to gain microscopic understanding of the transition between peptide adsorption and adsorption resistance as the surface contact angle is varied. In both simulations and experiments, the surfaces become adsorption resistant against hydrophilic as well as hydrophobic peptides when their contact angle decreases below θ ≈ 50°-60°, thus confirming the so-called Berg limit established in the context of protein and cell adsorption. Entropy/enthalpy decomposition of the simulation results reveals that the key discriminator between the adsorption of different residues on a hydrophobic monolayer is of entropic nature and thus is suggested to be linked to the hydrophobic effect. By pushing a polyalanine peptide onto a polar surface, simulations reveal that the peptide adsorption resistance is caused by the strongly bound water hydration layer and characterized by the simultaneous gain of both total entropy in the system and total number of hydrogen bonds between water, peptide, and surface. This mechanistic insight into peptide adsorption resistance might help to refine design principles for anti-fouling surfaces.

Can simulations quantitatively predict peptide transfer free energies to urea solutions? Thermodynamic concepts and force field limitations.

Many proteins denature when they are transferred to concentrated urea solutions. Three mechanisms for urea's denaturing ability have been proposed: (i) direct binding to polar parts of the protein surface, (ii) direct binding to nonpolar parts of the protein surface, and (iii) an indirect effect mediated by modifications of the bulk water properties. The disentanglement of these three processes has been the goal of many experimental and computational studies, yet there is no final agreement on the relative importance of the three contributions. The separation of the two direct mechanisms, albeit conceptually clear, is difficult in experimental studies and in simulations depends subtly on how the discrimination between polar and nonpolar groups is accomplished. Indirect effects, embodied in the change of solution activity as urea is added, are rarely monitored in urea/peptide simulations and thus have remained elusive in numerical studies. In this paper we establish a rigorous separation of all three contributions to the solvation thermodynamics of stretched peptide chains. We contrast this scenario with two commonly used model systems: the air/water interface and the interface between water and a hydrophobic alkane self-assembled monolayer. Together with bulk thermodynamic properties of urea/water mixed solvents, a complete thermodynamic description of the urea/water/peptide system is obtained: urea avoids the air/water interface but readily adsorbs at the oil-water interface and at hydrophobic as well as hydrophilic peptide chains, in accordance with experimental results. Simple thermodynamic arguments show that the indirect contribution to urea's denaturing capability is negligibly small, although urea strongly changes the water bulk properties as judged by the number of hydrogen bonds formed. Urea's tendency to bind to proteins is correctly reproduced with several force field combinations, but the quantitative binding strength as well as the relative importance of direct and indirect effects vary drastically between different force fields used for urea and the peptides.

Polypeptide friction and adhesion on hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces: a molecular dynamics case study.

Using all-atomistic MD simulations including explicit water, the mobility and adhesion of a mildly hydrophobic single polypeptide chain adsorbed on hydrophobic and hydrophilic diamond surfaces is investigated by application of lateral and vertical pulling forces. Forced motion on the hydrophilic surface exhibits stick-slip due to breaking and reformation of hydrogen bonds; in contrast, on the hydrophobic surface, the motion is smooth. By carefully tuning the driving force magnitude, the linear-response regime is reached on a hydrophobic surface and equilibrium values for mobility and adhesive strength are obtained. On the hydrophilic surface, on the other hand, slow hydrogen-bond kinetics prevents equilibration and only upper bounds for adhesion force and mobility can be estimated. Whereas the desorption force is rather comparable on the two surfaces and differs at most by a factor of 2, the mobility on the hydrophilic surface is at least 30-fold reduced compared to the hydrophobic one. A simple model based on a single particle diffusing in a corrugated potential landscape suggests that cooperativity is rather limited and that the small mobility on a hydrophilic surface can be rationalized in terms of incoherently moving monomers. The experimentally well-known peptide mobility in bulk water is quantitatively reproduced in our simulations, which serves as a sensitive test on our methodology employed.

Molecular hydrophobic attraction and ion-specific effects studied by molecular dynamics.

Much is written about "hydrophobic forces" that act between solvated molecules and nonpolar interfaces, but it is not always clear what causes these forces and whether they should be labeled as hydrophobic. Hydrophobic effects roughly fall in two classes, those that are influenced by the addition of salt and those that are not. Bubble adsorption and cavitation effects plague experiments and simulations of interacting extended hydrophobic surfaces and lead to a strong, almost irreversible attraction that has little or no dependence on salt type and concentration. In this paper, we are concerned with hydrophobic interactions between single molecules and extended surfaces and try to elucidate the relation to electrostatic and ion-specific effects. For these nanoscopic hydrophobic forces, bubbles and cavitation effects play only a minor role and even if present cause no equilibration problems. In specific, we study the forced desorption of peptides from nonpolar interfaces by means of molecular dynamics simulations and determine the adsorption potential of mean force. The simulation results for peptides compare well with corresponding AFM experiments. An analysis of the various contributions to the total peptide-surface interactions shows that structural effects of water as well as van der Waals interactions between surface and peptide are important. Hofmeister ion effects are studied by separately determining the effective interaction of various ions with hydrophobic surfaces. An extension of the Poisson-Boltzmann equation that includes the ion-specific potential of mean force yields surface potentials, interfacial tensions, and effective interactions between hydrophobic surfaces. There, we also analyze the energetic contributions to the potential of mean force and find that the most important factor determining ion-specific adsorption at hydrophobic surfaces can best be described as surface-modified ion hydration.

How the stabilization of INK4 tumor suppressor 3D structure evaluated by quantum chemical and molecular mechanics calculations corresponds well with experimental results: interplay of association enthalpy, entropy, and solvation effects.

The folding free energy of the INK4c tumor suppressor core, consisting of 10 helices, was determined as the sum of gas-phase interaction enthalpy, gas-phase interaction entropy, and dehydration and hydration free energy. The interaction energy and the hydration free energy were determined using the nonempirical density functional theory (DFT) method, augmented by a dispersion-energy correction term, the semiempirical density-functional tight-binding method covering the dispersion energy, and the density functional theory/conductor-like screening model (DFT/COSMO) procedure, whereas the interaction entropy was calculated with the empirical Cornell et al. force field. Alternatively, all contributions were evaluated consistently using empirical methods. All the values of the interaction energy of helix pairs are stabilizing, and the dominant stabilizing terms stem from the London dispersion energy and, in the case of charged systems, the electrostatic energy. The stabilization energy of the core, determined as the difference of the energy of the core and 10 separate helices, amounts to approximately 450 kcal/mol. Systematically, the difference in the hydration free energy of a helix pair and its separate components is smaller in magnitude than the interaction energy, and it is negative for some pairs while positive for others. The average total free energy of a core formation amounts to -29.6 kcal/mol (yielded by scaled quantum-chemical methods) and +13.9 kcal/mol (resulting from empirical methods). These values are considerably smaller than their single components, which are dominated by the interaction energy. The computationally predicted interval encloses the experimental value of the folding free energy (-2.8 kcal/mol).