Chemical Research in Chinese Universities ›› 2013, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (5): 1016-1021.doi: 10.1007/s40242-013-2427-x

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Mutation Induced Structural Variation in Membrane Proteins

DUAN Xiao-zheng1, LI Yun-qi2, SHI Tong-fei1, HUANG Qing-rong2, AN Li-jia1   

  1. 1. State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, P. R. China;
    2. Food Science Department, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901, USA
  • Received:2012-11-07 Revised:2013-02-28 Online:2013-10-01 Published:2013-09-17
  • Contact: SHI Tong-fei E-mail:tfshi@ciac.jl.cn
  • Supported by:

    Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China(No.2009CB930100) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.50973110, 51028301).

Abstract:

Point mutations on membrane proteins may lead to small structural variations. Prediction of such structural variations can help to further understand the related bio-activities of membrane proteins. We constructed fifteen hybrid energy functions on the basis of Chemistry at Harvard Macromolecular Mechanics(CHARMM) force field, hydrogen bonding potential and distance-scaled, finite ideal-gas reference(DFIRE)-like statistical energies, and evaluated their performance on a representative dataset of homologous membrane proteins via a newly developed all-atom replica exchange Monte Carlo algorithm. The energy function composed of CHARMM and hydrogen bonding potential has the best performance, and the original DFIRE potential shows much better performance than the DFIRE-like potentials constructed from membrane proteins. We can conclude that more membrane protein structures with high resolution are necessary for the construction of robust prediction method of mutation induced membrane protein structure variations.

Key words: Distance-scaled, finite ideal-gas reference(DFIRE), Hybrid function, Membrane protein, Mutation, Replica exchange Monte Carlo