Trifluoromethyloxadiazoles: inhibitors of histone deacetylases for control of Asian soybean rust.

BACKGROUND: Trifluoromethyloxadiazoles (TFMOs) are selective inhibitors of class II histone deacetylases (HDACs). To date, class II HDACs have not been addressed as target enzymes by commercial fungicides. RESULTS: Antifungal testing of a broad variety of TFMOs against several important plant pathogens showed activity against only rusts, and especially Phakopsora pachyrhizi, the cause of Asian soybean rust. A structure-activity relationship was established, leading to highly active fungicides that inhibit fungal class II and HOS3-type HDACs of Aspergillus nidulans. Studies of the enzyme-inhibitor binding mode using protein structural information based on the crystal structure of human HDAC4 argue that TFMOs inhibit these enzymes only after undergoing hydration. CONCLUSION: Fungal class II HDACs are potential target enzymes for the control of at least some biotrophic crop diseases, in particular Asian soybean rust. As with any novel mode-of-action, class II HDAC fungicides would offer the potential to control fungal isolates that show reduced sensitivity toward existing commercial fungicides.

A Novel Single-Site Mutation in the Catalytic Domain of Protoporphyrinogen Oxidase IX (PPO) Confers Resistance to PPO-Inhibiting Herbicides.

Protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO)-inhibiting herbicides are used to control weeds in a variety of crops. These herbicides inhibit heme and photosynthesis in plants. PPO-inhibiting herbicides are used to control Amaranthus palmeri (Palmer amaranth) especially those with resistance to glyphosate and acetolactate synthase (ALS) inhibiting herbicides. While investigating the basis of high fomesafen-resistance in A. palmeri, we identified a new amino acid substitution of glycine to alanine in the catalytic domain of PPO2 at position 399 (G399A) (numbered according to the protein sequence of A. palmeri). G399 is highly conserved in the PPO protein family across eukaryotic species. Through combined molecular, computational, and biochemical approaches, we established that PPO2 with G399A mutation has reduced affinity for several PPO-inhibiting herbicides, possibly due to steric hindrance induced by the mutation. This is the first report of a PPO2 amino acid substitution at G399 position in a field-selected weed population of A. palmeri. The mutant A. palmeri PPO2 showed high-level in vitro resistance to different PPO inhibitors relative to the wild type. The G399A mutation is very likely to confer resistance to other weed species under selection imposed by the extensive agricultural use of PPO-inhibiting herbicides.

Sensitivity of Phakopsora pachyrhizi towards quinone-outside-inhibitors and demethylation-inhibitors, and corresponding resistance mechanisms.

BACKGROUND: Since the invasion of Phakopsora pachyrhizi (Syd. & P. Syd.) in Brazil, there have been detrimental yield losses of soybeans [Glycine max (L.) Merr.]. Disease management is mainly based on fungicide treatment. The sensitivity of single P. pachyhrizi isolates towards different demethylation-inhibitors (DMIs) and quinone-outside-inhibitors (QoI) was surveyed and the corresponding resistance mechanisms were analysed. RESULTS: The QoI-response remained stable, while a loss of sensitivity towards DMIs occurred. Molecular analyses of cytochrome b showed an intron after codon 143 which is reported to prevent the development of a G143A mutation. Analysis of cyp51 revealed that point mutations and overexpression are involved in the sensitivity reduction towards DMIs. Of the detected mutations, Y131F and Y131H, respectively, and K142R are likely homologous to mutations found in other pathogens. As suggested by modelling studies, these three mutations as well as additional mutations F120L, I145F and I475T correlate to increased effective doses of 50%, ED50 -values, towards all tested DMIs. Furthermore, a constitutive up-regulation of the cyp51-gene up to ten-fold was noticed in some of the DMI-adapted isolates, while all sensitive isolates responded as the wild type. CONCLUSION: The G143A mutation is thought to result in significant as well as stable resistance factors towards QoIs, while other mutations play only a minor role. Since G143A development is prevented in Phakopsora pachyhrizi, a stable control of soybean rust with QoIs in future is rather likely. In contrast, a shifting in sensitivity towards DMIs has been observed, which is due to multiple independent mechanisms.

Pocket-space maps to identify novel binding-site conformations in proteins.

The identification of novel binding-site conformations can greatly assist the progress of structure-based ligand design projects. Diverse pocket shapes drive medicinal chemistry to explore a broader chemical space and thus present additional opportunities to overcome key drug discovery issues such as potency, selectivity, toxicity, and pharmacokinetics. We report a new automated approach to diverse pocket selection, PocketAnalyzer(PCA), which applies principal component analysis and clustering to the output of a grid-based pocket detection algorithm. Since the approach works directly with pocket shape descriptors, it is free from some of the problems hampering methods that are based on proxy shape descriptors, e.g. a set of atomic positional coordinates. The approach is technically straightforward and allows simultaneous analysis of mutants, isoforms, and protein structures derived from multiple sources with different residue numbering schemes. The PocketAnalyzer(PCA) approach is illustrated by the compilation of diverse sets of pocket shapes for aldose reductase and viral neuraminidase. In both cases this allows identification of novel computationally derived binding-site conformations that are yet to be observed crystallographically. Indeed, known inhibitors capable of exploiting these novel binding-site conformations are subsequently identified, thereby demonstrating the utility of PocketAnalyzer(PCA) for rationalizing and improving the understanding of the molecular basis of protein-ligand interaction and bioactivity. A Python program implementing the PocketAnalyzer(PCA) approach is available for download under an open-source license ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/papca/ or http://cpclab.uni-duesseldorf.de/downloads ).

Accurate quantum-mechanical rate constants for a linear response Azzouz-Borgis proton transfer model employing the multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree approach.

The multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (ML-MCTDH) method is applied to simulate the quantum dynamics and thermal rate constant of the Azzouz-Borgis model of proton transfer in a polar solvent. To this end, the original atomistic potential is mapped to a system-bath model. Employing the flux correlation function formalism and importance sampling techniques, accurate quantum mechanical rate constants are obtained, which provide a benchmark for evaluating approximate approaches to study the quantum dynamics of condensed-phase chemical reactions. Furthermore, the validity of the mapping procedure is discussed based on the comparison of the classical dynamics of the original atomistic Azzouz-Borgis model and the mapped system-bath model.

Managing residual risk in patients receiving statin therapy.

Until the results of several statin trials are available, it is recommended that the current indications and usage of ezetimibe be continued.

Ensemble docking into multiple crystallographically derived protein structures: an evaluation based on the statistical analysis of enrichments.

Docking into multiple receptor conformations ("ensemble docking") has been proposed, and employed, in the hope that it may account for receptor flexibility in virtual screening and thus provide higher enrichments than docking into single rigid receptor structures. The statistical analyses presented in this paper provide quantitative evidence that in some cases docking into a crystallographically derived conformational ensemble does indeed yield better enrichment than docking into any of the individual members of the ensemble. However, these "successful" ensembles account for only a minority of those examined and it would not have been possible to prospectively predict their identity using only protein structural information. A more frequently observed outcome is that the ensemble enrichment is higher than the mean of the enrichments provided by its individual members. An additional and promising finding is that, if a set of known active compounds is available, an approach based on induced-fit docking appears to be a reliable way to construct ensembles which provide relatively high enrichments.

Proton transfer in a polar solvent from ring polymer reaction rate theory.

We have used the ring polymer molecular dynamics method to study the Azzouz-Borgis model for proton transfer between phenol (AH) and trimethylamine (B) in liquid methyl chloride. When the A-H distance is used as the reaction coordinate, the ring polymer trajectories are found to exhibit multiple recrossings of the transition state dividing surface and to give a rate coefficient that is smaller than the quantum transition state theory value by an order of magnitude. This is to be expected on kinematic grounds for a heavy-light-heavy reaction when the light atom transfer coordinate is used as the reaction coordinate, and it clearly precludes the use of transition state theory with this reaction coordinate. As has been shown previously for this problem, a solvent polarization coordinate defined in terms of the expectation value of the proton transfer distance in the ground adiabatic quantum state provides a better reaction coordinate with less recrossing. These results are discussed in light of the wide body of earlier theoretical work on the Azzouz-Borgis model and the considerable range of previously reported values for its proton and deuteron transfer rate coefficients.

Proton transfer reactions in model condensed-phase environments: Accurate quantum dynamics using the multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree approach.

The recently proposed multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (ML-MCTDH) approach to evaluating reactive quantum dynamics is applied to two model condensed-phase proton transfer reactions. The models consist of a one-dimensional double-well "system" that is bilinearly coupled to a "bath" of harmonic oscillators parameterized to represent a condensed-phase environment. Numerically exact quantum-mechanical flux correlation functions and thermal rate constants are obtained for a broad range of temperatures and system-bath coupling strengths, thus demonstrating the efficacy of the ML-MCTDH approach. Particular attention is focused on the regime where low temperatures are combined with weak system-bath coupling. Under such conditions it is found that long propagation times are often required and that quantum coherence effects may prevent a rigorous determination of the rate constant.

A refined ring polymer molecular dynamics theory of chemical reaction rates.

We further develop the ring polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD) method for calculating chemical reaction rates [I. R. Craig and D. E. Manolopoulos, J. Chem. Phys. 122, 084106 (2005)]. We begin by showing how the rate coefficient we obtained before can be calculated in a more efficient way by considering the side functions of the ring-polymer centroids, rather than averaging over the side functions of the individual ring-polymer beads. This has two distinct advantages. First, the statistics of the phase-space average over the ring-polymer coordinates and momenta are greatly improved. Second, the resulting flux-side correlation function converges to its long-time limit much more rapidly. Indeed the short-time limit of this flux-side correlation function already provides a "quantum transition state theory" approximation to the final rate coefficient. In cases where transition state recrossing effects are negligible, and the transition state dividing surface is put in the right place, the RPMD rate is therefore obtained almost instantly. We then go on to show that the long-time limit of the new flux-side correlation function, and hence the fully converged RPMD reaction rate, is rigorously independent of the choice of the transition state dividing surface. This is especially significant because the optimum dividing surface can often be very difficult to determine for reactions in complex chemical systems.

Chemical reaction rates from ring polymer molecular dynamics.

We show how the ring-polymer molecular dynamics method can be adapted to calculate approximate Kubo-transformed flux-side correlation functions, and hence rate coefficients for condensed phase reactions. An application of the method to the standard model for a chemical reaction in solution--a quartic double-well potential linearly coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators--is found to give results of comparable accuracy to those of the classical Wigner model and the centroid molecular dynamics method. However, since the present method does not require that one evaluate the Wigner transform of a thermal flux operator or that one perform a separate path integral calculation for each molecular dynamics time step, we believe it will prove easier to apply to more general problems than either of these alternative techniques. We also present a (logarithmic) discretization scheme for the Ohmic bath in the system-bath model that gives converged results with just nine bath modes--a surprisingly small number for a model of a condensed phase reaction. Finally, we present some calculations of the transmission through an Eckart barrier which show that the present method provides a satisfactory (although not perfect) description of the deep quantum tunneling regime. Part of the reason for the success of the method is that it gives the exact quantum-mechanical rate constant for the transmission through a parabolic barrier, as we demonstrate analytically in the Appendix.

Quantum statistics and classical mechanics: real time correlation functions from ring polymer molecular dynamics.

We propose an approximate method for calculating Kubo-transformed real-time correlation functions involving position-dependent operators, based on path integral (Parrinello-Rahman) molecular dynamics. The method gives the exact quantum mechanical correlation function at time zero, exactly satisfies the quantum mechanical detailed balance condition, and for correlation functions of the form C(Ax)(t) and C(xB)(t) it gives the exact result for a harmonic potential. It also works reasonably well at short times for more general potentials and correlation functions, as we illustrate with some example calculations. The method provides a consistent improvement over purely classical molecular dynamics that is most apparent in the low-temperature regime.