Issue February 2010

category image Volume 27
No. 4 (p 399-572)
February 2010
ISSN 0739-110

20ns Molecular Dynamics Simulation of the Antennapedia Homeodomain-DNA Complex: Water Interaction and DNA Structure Analysis (443-455)

Homeodomains are one of the important families of eukaryotic DNA-binding motifs and provide an important model system for studying protein-DNA interactions. The crystal structure and NMR structure of the antennapedia homeodomain-DNA complex and comparison between them is available. Although earlier works have shown that the direct contacts and water mediated contacts are important for the binding and specificity. The detail dynamical structural characteristics of the complex, water mediating interactions in the complex and also the detail study of the free DNA and protein has not done. In the present paper we have reported the results of 20ns MD simulation of this complex with the presence of explicit water and also the 20ns MD simulation of the protein and the DNA separately in explicit water. The results show that the complex remains stable during the last 8ns of the simulation. The part of the protein which is interacting with the DNA has fewer fluctuations than other part of the protein. The pattern of water distribution around the interacting center has a typical pattern for this complex and it is quite different from the free protein and the free DNA. Water molecules penetrate into the interacting center during the simulation. Several water bridges have been identified which is responsible for recognition but not observed in the crystal structure. The recognized DNA sequence (14 mer) has been characterized by helical and step parameters. The correlated motions of the DNA and the protein in the complexed form and the free form has been analyzed.

Sujata Roy1
Ashoke Ranjan Thakur2

1Department of Bioinformatics, West Bengal University of Technology BF-142.Sector-I Salt Lake kolkata-700064 India
2West Bengal State University Berunanpukuria, P.O. Malikapur North 24 Parganas, PIN 700126, India

thakur.ashoke@gmail.com

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