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Biophys J, October 2001, p. 1841-1853, Vol. 81, No. 4

Calculations of Free-Energy Contributions to Protein-RNA Complex Stabilization

Mark A. Olson

Molecular Modeling Laboratory, Department of Cell Biology and Biochemistry, United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Frederick, Maryland 21702 USA

The problem of calculating binding affinities of protein-RNA complexes is addressed by analyzing a computational strategy of modeling electrostatic free energies based on a nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann (NLPB) model and linear response approximation (LRA). The underlying idea is to treat binding as a two-step process. Solutions to the NLPB equation calculate free energies arising from electronic polarizability and the LRA is constructed from molecular dynamics simulations to model reorganization free energies due to conformational transitions. By implementing a consistency condition of requiring the NLPB model to reproduce the solute-solvent free-energy transitions determined by the LRA, a "macromolecule dielectric constant" (epsilon m) for treating reorganization is obtained. The applicability of this hybrid approach was evaluated by calculating the absolute free energy of binding and free-energy changes for amino acid substitutions in the complex between the U1A spliceosomal protein and its cognate RNA hairpin. Depending on the residue substitution, epsilon m varied from 3 to 18, and reflected dipolar reorientation not included in the polarization modeled by epsilon m = 2. Although the changes in binding affinities from substitutions modeled strictly at the implicit level by the NLPB equation with epsilon m = 4 reproduced the experimental values with good overall agreement, substitutions problematic to this simple treatment showed significant improvement when solved by the NLPB-LRA approach.

Biophys J, October 2001, p. 1841-1853, Vol. 81, No. 4
© 2001 by the Biophysical Society   0006-3495/01/10/1841/13  $2.00


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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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Copyright © 2001 by the Biophysical Society.