Modeling dimerizations of transmembrane proteins using
Brownian dynamics simulations
Abstract:
The dimerizations of membrane proteins, Outer
Membrane Phospholipase A (OMPLA) and glycophorin A
(GPA), have been simulated by an adapted Brownian
Dynamics program. To mimic the membrane protein
environment, we introduced a hybrid electrostatic potential
map of membrane and water for electrostatic interaction
calculations. We added a van der Waals potential term to
the force field of the current version of the BD program to
simulate the short-range interactions of the two monomers.
We reduced the BD sampling space from three dimensions
to two dimensions to improve the efficiency of BD simulations
for membrane proteins. The OMPLA and GPA
dimers predicted by our 2D-BD simulation and structural
refinement is in good agreement with the experimental
structures. The adapted 2D-BD method could be used for
prediction of dimerization of other membrane proteins,
such as G protein-coupled receptors, to help better understanding
of the structures and functions of membrane
proteins.