| 1. |
- dos Santos Soares, Ricardo de Oliveira, et al.
(författare)
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Membrane vesiculation induced by proteins of the dengue virus envelope studied by molecular dynamics simulations
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Physics. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0953-8984 .- 1361-648X. ; 29:50
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Biological membranes are continuously remodeled in the cell by specific membrane-shaping machineries to form, for example, tubes and vesicles. We examine fundamental mechanisms involved in the vesiculation processes induced by a cluster of envelope (E) and membrane (M) proteins of the dengue virus (DENV) using molecular dynamics simulations and a coarse-grained model. We show that an arrangement of three E-M heterotetramers (EM3) works as a bending unit and an ordered cluster of five such units generates a closed vesicle, reminiscent of the virus budding process. In silico mutagenesis of two charged residues of the anchor helices of the envelope proteins of DENV shows that Arg-471 and Arg-60 are fundamental to produce bending stress on the membrane. The fine-tuning between the size of the EM3 unit and its specific bending action suggests this protein unit is an important factor in determining the viral particle size.
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| 2. |
- Bortot, Leandro Oliveira, et al.
(författare)
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Making Soup : Preparing and Validating Models of the Bacterial Cytoplasm for Molecular Simulation
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling. - : AMER CHEMICAL SOC. - 1549-9596 .- 1549-960X. ; 60:1, s. 322-331
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Biomolecular crowding affects the biophysical and biochemical behavior of macromolecules compared with the dilute environment in experiments on isolated proteins. Computational modeling and simulation are useful tools to study how crowding affects the structural dynamics and biological properties of macromolecules. With increases in computational power, modeling and simulation of large-scale all-atom explicit-solvent models of the prokaryote cytoplasm have now become possible. In this work, we built an atomistic model of the cytoplasm of Escherichia coli composed of 1.5 million atoms and submitted it to a total of 3 mu s of molecular dynamics simulations. The model consisted of eight different proteins representing about 50% of the cytoplasmic proteins and one type of t-RNA molecule. Properties of biomolecules under crowding conditions were compared with those from simulations of the individual compounds under dilute conditions. The simulation model was found to be consistent with experimental data about the diffusion coefficient and stability of macromolecules under crowded conditions. In order to stimulate further work, we provide a Python script and a set of files to enable other researchers to build their own E. coli cytoplasm models to address questions related to crowding.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Keasar, Chen, et al.
(författare)
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An analysis and evaluation of the WeFold collaborative for protein structure prediction and its pipelines in CASP11 and CASP12
- 2018
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP. - 2045-2322. ; 8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Every two years groups worldwide participate in the Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) experiment to blindly test the strengths and weaknesses of their computational methods. CASP has significantly advanced the field but many hurdles still remain, which may require new ideas and collaborations. In 2012 a web-based effort called WeFold, was initiated to promote collaboration within the CASP community and attract researchers from other fields to contribute new ideas to CASP. Members of the WeFold coopetition (cooperation and competition) participated in CASP as individual teams, but also shared components of their methods to create hybrid pipelines and actively contributed to this effort. We assert that the scale and diversity of integrative prediction pipelines could not have been achieved by any individual lab or even by any collaboration among a few partners. The models contributed by the participating groups and generated by the pipelines are publicly available at the WeFold website providing a wealth of data that remains to be tapped. Here, we analyze the results of the 2014 and 2016 pipelines showing improvements according to the CASP assessment as well as areas that require further adjustments and research.
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