Toward in vivo relevant drug design.

Current early and preclinical drug discovery are rooted in decades-old empirical principles describing structure-free energy and structure-function relationships under equilibrium conditions that frequently break down under in vivo conditions. Improved prediction of efficacy and toxicity depends on a paradigm shift to in vivo-relevant principles describing the true nonequilibrium/nonlinear dynamic (NLD) nature of cellular systems. Here, we outline a holistic, in vivo-relevant first principles theory ('Biodynamics'), in which cellular function/dysfunction, and pharmaco-/toxicodynamic effects are considered as emergent behaviors of multimolecular systems powered by covalent and noncovalent free energy sources. The reduction to practice of Biodynamics theory consists of in silico simulations performed at the atomistic and molecular systems levels, versus empirical models fit to in vitro data under the classical paradigm.

Probing the Dynamic Structure-Function and Structure-Free Energy Relationships of the Coronavirus Main Protease with Biodynamics Theory.

The SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) is of major interest as an antiviral drug target. Structure-based virtual screening efforts, fueled by a growing list of apo and inhibitor-bound SARS-CoV/CoV-2 Mpro crystal structures, are underway in many laboratories. However, little is known about the dynamic enzyme mechanism, which is needed to inform both assay development and structure-based inhibitor design. Here, we apply biodynamics theory to characterize the structural dynamics of substrate-induced Mpro activation under nonequilibrium conditions. The catalytic cycle is governed by concerted dynamic structural rearrangements of domain 3 and the m-shaped loop (residues 132-147) on which Cys145 (comprising the thiolate nucleophile and half of the oxyanion hole) and Gly143 (comprising the second half of the oxyanion hole) reside. In particular, we observed the following: (1) Domain 3 undergoes dynamic rigid-body rotation about the domain 2-3 linker, alternately visiting two primary conformational states (denoted as M1 pro ↔ M2 pro); (2) The Gly143-containing crest of the m-shaped loop undergoes up and down translations caused by conformational changes within the rising stem of the loop (Lys137-Asn142) in response to domain 3 rotation and dimerization (denoted as M1/down pro ↔ 2·M2/up pro) (noting that the Cys145-containing crest is fixed in the up position). We propose that substrates associate to the M1/down pro state, which promotes the M2/down pro state, dimerization (denoted as 2·M2/up pro-substrate), and catalysis. Here, we explore the state transitions of Mpro under nonequilibrium conditions, the mechanisms by which they are powered, and the implications thereof for efficacious inhibition under in vivo conditions.

Estimation of Solvation Entropy and Enthalpy via Analysis of Water Oxygen-Hydrogen Correlations.

A statistical-mechanical framework for estimation of solvation entropies and enthalpies is proposed, which is based on the analysis of water as a mixture of correlated water oxygens and water hydrogens. Entropic contributions of increasing order are cast in terms of a Mutual Information Expansion that is evaluated to pairwise interactions. In turn, the enthalpy is computed directly from a distance-based hydrogen bonding energy algorithm. The resulting expressions are employed for grid-based analyses of Molecular Dynamics simulations. In this first assessment of the methodology, we obtained global estimates of the excess entropy and enthalpy of water that are in good agreement with experiment and examined the method's ability to enable detailed elucidation of solvation thermodynamic structures, which can provide valuable knowledge toward molecular design.

Time-averaged distributions of solute and solvent motions: exploring proton wires of GFP and PfM2DH.

Proton translocation pathways of selected variants of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) and Pseudomonas fluorescens mannitol 2-dehydrogenase (PfM2DH) were investigated via an explicit solvent molecular dynamics-based analysis protocol that allows for direct quantitative relationship between a crystal structure and its time-averaged solute-solvent structure obtained from simulation. Our study of GFP is in good agreement with previous research suggesting that the proton released from the chromophore upon photoexcitation can diffuse through an extended internal hydrogen bonding network that allows for the proton to exit to bulk or be recaptured by the anionic chromophore. Conversely for PfM2DH, we identified the most probable ionization states of key residues along the proton escape channel from the catalytic site to bulk solvent, wherein the solute and high-density solvent crystal structures of binary and ternary complexes were properly reproduced. Furthermore, we proposed a plausible mechanism for this proton translocation process that is consistent with the state-dependent structural shifts observed in our analysis. The time-averaged structures generated from our analyses facilitate validation of MD simulation results and provide a comprehensive profile of the dynamic all-occupancy solvation network within and around a flexible solute, from which detailed hydrogen-bonding networks can be inferred. In this way, potential drawbacks arising from the elucidation of these networks by examination of static crystal structures or via alternate rigid-protein solvation analysis procedures can be overcome. Complementary studies aimed at the effective use of our methodology for alternate implementations (e.g., ligand design) are currently underway.