Biology subjects

Dubanevics, I.

Publications and source records attributed to Dubanevics, I..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Computational Analysis of Dynamic Allostery and Control in the three SARS-CoV-2 non-structural proteins

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has no vaccine or antiviral drugs available to the public, at the time of writing. The virus non-structural proteins are promising drug targets because of their vital role in the viral cycle. A significant body of work has been focused on finding inhibitors which covalently and competitively bind the active site of the non-structural proteins, but little has been done to address regions other than the active site, i.e. for non-competitive inhibition. Here we extend previous work on the SARS-CoV-2 Mpro (nsp5) to three other SARS-CoV-2 proteins: host shutoff factor (nsp1), papain-like protease (nsp3, also known as PLpro) and RNA-dependent RNA-polymerase (nsp12, also known as RdRp) in complex with nsp7 and nsp8 cofactors. Using open-source software (DDPT) to construct Elastic Network Models (ENM) of the chosen proteins we analyse their fluctuation dynamics and thermodynamics, as well as using this protein family to study convergence and robustness of the ENM. Exhaustive 2-point mutational scans of the ENM and their effect on fluctuation free energies suggest several new candidate regions, distant from the active site, for control of the proteins function, which may assist the drug development based on the current small molecule binding screens. The results also provide new insights, including non-additive effects of double-mutation or inhibition, into the active biophysical research field of protein fluctuation allostery and its underpinning dynamical structure.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2020

Computational Analysis of Dynamic Allostery and Control in the SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has generated a global pandemic and no vaccine or antiviral drugs exist at the moment of writing. An attractive coronavirus drug target is the main protease (Mpro, also known as 3CLpro) because of its vital role in the viral cycle. A significant body of work has been focused on finding inhibitors which bind and block the active site of the main protease, but little has been done to address potential non-competitive inhibition which targets regions beyond the active site, partly because the fundamental biophysics of such allosteric control is still poorly understood. In this work, we construct an Elastic Network Model (ENM) of the SARS-CoV-2 Mpro homodimer protein and analyse the dynamics and thermodynamics of the main proteases ENM. We found a rich and heterogeneous dynamical structure in the correlated motions, including allosterically correlated motions between the homodimeric proteases active sites. Exhaustive 1-point and 2-point mutation scans of the ENM and their effect on fluctuation free energies confirm previously experimentally identified bioactive residues, but also suggest several new candidate regions that are distant from the active site for control of the protease function. Our results suggest new dynamically-driven control regions as possible candidates for non-competitive inhibiting binding sites in the protease, which may assist the development of current fragmentbased binding screens. The results also provide new insight into the protein physics of fluctuation allostery and its underpinning dynamical structure.

biophysics↗