Intramolecular signaling pathways revealed by modeling anisotropic thermal diffusion

J Mol Biol. 2005 Aug 12;351(2):345-54. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2005.05.043.

Abstract

A variety of experimental evidence suggests that rapid, long-range propagation of conformational changes through the core of proteins plays a vital role in allosteric communication. Here, we describe a non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation method, anisotropic thermal diffusion (ATD), which allowed us to observe a dominant intramolecular signaling pathway in PSD-95, a member of the PDZ domain protein family. The observed pathway is in good accordance with a pathway previously inferred using a multiple sequence analysis of 276 PDZ domain proteins. In comparison with conventional solution molecular dynamics methods, the ATD method provides greatly enhanced signal-to-noise, allowing long-distance correlations to be observed clearly. The ATD method requires neither a large number of homologous proteins, nor extremely long simulation times to obtain a complete signaling pathway within a protein. Therefore, the ATD method should prove to be a powerful and general complement to experimental efforts to understand the physical basis of intramolecular signaling.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Allosteric Site
  • Animals
  • Anisotropy*
  • Binding Sites
  • Biophysical Phenomena
  • Biophysics
  • Diffusion
  • Disks Large Homolog 4 Protein
  • Hot Temperature
  • Intracellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins
  • Kinetics
  • Membrane Proteins
  • Models, Molecular
  • Models, Statistical
  • Nerve Tissue Proteins / chemistry
  • Protein Conformation
  • Protein Structure, Tertiary
  • Rats
  • Signal Transduction*
  • Software
  • Temperature
  • Time Factors

Substances

  • Disks Large Homolog 4 Protein
  • Dlg4 protein, rat
  • Intracellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins
  • Membrane Proteins
  • Nerve Tissue Proteins
  • postsynaptic density proteins