Issue 24, 2019, Issue in Progress

Using molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate active designs of cephradine hydrolase by molecular mechanics/Poisson–Boltzmann surface area and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area methods

Abstract

The poor predictive accuracy of current computational enzyme design methods has led to low success rates of producing highly active variants that target non-natural substrates. In this report, a quantitative assessment approach based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations was developed to eliminate false-positive enzyme designs at the computational stage. Taking cephradine hydrolase as an example, the apparent Michaelis binding constant (Km) and catalytic efficiency (kcat/Km) of designed variants were correlated with binding free energies and activation energy barriers, respectively, as calculated by molecular mechanics/Poisson–Boltzmann surface area (MM/PBSA) and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area (MM/GBSA) methods with explicit water considered based on general MD simulation protocols. The correlation results showed that both the MM/GBSA and MM/PBSA methods with a protein dielectric constant (εp = 4) could rank the variants well based on the predicted binding free energies between enzyme and the substrate. Furthermore, the activation energy barriers calculated by the MM/PBSA method with an εp = 24 correlated well with kcat/Km. Thus, false-positive variants obtained by the enzyme design program PRODA were eliminated prior to experimentation. Therefore, MD simulation-based quantitative assessment of designed variants greatly enhanced the predictive accuracy of computational enzyme design tools and should facilitate the construction of artificial enzymes with high catalytic activities toward non-natural substrates.

Graphical abstract: Using molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate active designs of cephradine hydrolase by molecular mechanics/Poisson–Boltzmann surface area and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area methods

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
31 Mar 2019
Accepted
30 Apr 2019
First published
07 May 2019
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2019,9, 13868-13877

Using molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate active designs of cephradine hydrolase by molecular mechanics/Poisson–Boltzmann surface area and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area methods

J. Xue, X. Huang and Y. Zhu, RSC Adv., 2019, 9, 13868 DOI: 10.1039/C9RA02406A

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