Evaluation of the stereochemical quality of predicted RNA 3D models in the RNA-Puzzles submissions.

In silico prediction is a well-established approach to derive a general shape of an RNA molecule based on its sequence or secondary structure. This paper reports an analysis of the stereochemical quality of the RNA three-dimensional models predicted using dedicated computer programs. The stereochemistry of 1052 RNA 3D structures, including 1030 models predicted by fully automated and human-guided approaches within 22 RNA-Puzzles challenges and reference structures, is analyzed. The evaluation is based on standards of RNA stereochemistry that the Protein Data Bank requires from deposited experimental structures. Deviations from standard bond lengths and angles, planarity, or chirality are quantified. A reduction in the number of such deviations should help in the improvement of RNA 3D structure modeling approaches.

The high affinity of small-molecule antioxidants for hemoglobin.

Hemoglobin has previously been shown to display ascorbate peroxidase and urate peroxidase activity, with measurable Michaelis-Menten parameters that reveal a particularly low Km for ascorbate as well as for urate - lower than the respective in vivo concentrations of these antioxidants in blood. Also, direct detection of a hemoglobin-ascorbate interaction was possible by monitoring the 1H-NMR spectrum of ascorbate in the presence of hemoglobin. The relative difference in structures between ascorbate and urate may raise the question as to exactly what the defining structural features would be, for a substrate that binds to hemoglobin with high affinity. Reported here are Michaelis-Menten parameters for hemoglobin acting as peroxidase against a number of other substrates of varying structures - gallate, caffeate, rutin, 3-hydroxyflavone, 3,6-dihydroxyflavone, quercetin, epicatechin, luteolin - all with high affinities (some higher than those of physiologically-relevant redox partners of Hb - ascorbate and urate). Moreover, this high affinity appears general to animal hemoglobins. 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR spectra reveal a general pattern wherein small hydrophilic antioxidants appear to all have their signals affected, presumably due to binding to hemoglobin. Fluorescence and calorimetry measurements confirm these conclusions. Docking calculations confirm the existence of binding sites on hemoglobin and on myoglobin for ascorbate as well as for other antioxidants. Support is found for involvement of Tyr42 in binding of three out of the four substrates investigated in the case of hemoglobin (including ascorbate and urate, as blood-contained relevant substrates), but also for Tyr145 (with urate and caffeate) and Tyr35 (with gallate).

Computational study of protein secondary structure elements: Ramachandran plots revisited.

Potential energy surface (PES) were built for nineteen amino acids using density functional theory (PW91 and DFT M062X/6-311**). Examining the energy as a function of the φ/ψ dihedral angles in the allowed regions of the Ramachandran plot, amino acid groups that share common patterns on their PES plots and global minima were identified. These patterns show partial correlation with their structural and pharmacophoric features. Differences between these computational results and the experimentally noted permitted conformations of each amino acid are rationalized on the basis of attractive intra- and inter-molecular non-covalent interactions. The present data are focused on the intrinsic properties of an amino acid - an element which to our knowledge is typically ignored, as larger models are always used for the sake of similarity to real biological polypeptides.

Performance comparison of computational methods for modeling alpha-helical structures.

Geometry optimization results are reported for secondary structural elements of small proteins and polypeptides. Emphasis is placed on how well molecular mechanics as well as semiempirical, ab initio, and density functional methods describe α-helical and related structures in purely theoretical models (Gly10, Ile10) as well as in realistic models (an α-helical region of calmodulin, and the complete structure of a small protein). Many of the methods examined here were found to provide unsatisfactory descriptions of the hydrogen-bonding interactions within polypeptide-type structures, as the α-helical canonical secondary structure motif was not reproduced accurately. Ab initio and DFT methods provided reasonable results only when solvation models were included, although Hartree-Fock failed even with solvation in one of the test cases; among the semiempirical methods, one of the PM6 implementations performed very well.