Basic side chains play major roles in recognition of nucleic acids by proteins. However, dynamic properties of these positively charged side chains are not well understood. In this work, we studied changes in conformational dynamics of basic side chains upon protein–DNA association for the zinc-finger protein Egr-1. By nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, we characterized the dynamics of all side-chain cationic groups in the free protein and in the complex with target DNA. Our NMR order parameters indicate that the arginine guanidino groups interacting with DNA bases are strongly immobilized, forming rigid interfaces. Despite the strong short-range electrostatic interactions, the majority of the basic side chains interacting with the DNA phosphates exhibited high mobility, forming dynamic interfaces. In particular, the lysine side-chain amino groups exhibited only small changes in the order parameters upon DNA-binding. We found a similar trend in the molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for the free Egr-1 and the Egr-1–DNA complex. Using the MD trajectories, we also analyzed side-chain conformational entropy. The interfacial arginine side chains exhibited substantial entropic loss upon binding to DNA, whereas the interfacial lysine side chains showed relatively small changes in conformational entropy. These data illustrate different dynamic characteristics of the interfacial arginine and lysine side chains.

A simulation study of DPDPE in sodium chloride solution has been performed and compared with previous simulations using a different interaction potential for the ions. Both global thermodynamics as well as a characterization of association to DPDPE have been calculated. We show that the parameters used for the ions have a profound effect on the association to the peptide in 1M NaCl. The observed differences suggest that individual associations in these and previous simulations are sensitive to parameters. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Biopolymers (Pept Sci) 60: 134–152, 2001

Inflammation-mediated reactive molecules can result in an array of oxidized and halogenated DNA damage products including 5-chlorocytosine (ClC). Previous studies have shown that ClC can mimic 5-methylcytosine (mC) and act as a fraudulent epigenetic signal, promoting the methylation of previously unmethylated DNA sequences. Although the 5-halouracils are good substrates for base excision repair, no repair activity has yet been identified for ClC. Due to the apparent biochemical similarities of mC and ClC, we have investigated the effects of mC and ClC substitution on oligonucleotide structure and dynamics. In this study, we have constructed oligonucleotide duplexes containing C, ClC and mC within a CpG dinucleotide. The thermal and thermodynamic stability of these duplexes are found to be experimentally indistinguishable. Crystallographic structures of duplex oligonucleotides containing mC and ClC were determined to 1.2 and 1.9 Å, respectively. Both duplexes are B-form and are superimposable on a previously determined structure of a cytosine-containing duplex with RMSD of approximately 0.25 Å. NMR solution studies indicate that all duplexes containing cytosine or the cytosine analogs are normal B-form, and no structural perturbations are observed surrounding the site of each substitution. The magnitude of the base-stacking induced upfield shifts for non-exchangeable base proton resonances are similar for each of the duplexes examined, indicating that neither mC nor ClC significantly alter base stacking interactions. The ClC analog is paired with G in an apparently normal geometry; however the G-imino proton of the ClC-G base pair resonates to higher field relative to mC-G or C-G, indicating a weaker imino hydrogen bond. Using selective 15N-enrichment and isotope-edited NMR, we observe that the amino group of ClC rotates at roughly half the rate of the corresponding amino groups of the C-G or mC-G base pairs. The altered chemical shifts of hydrogen bonding proton resonances for the ClC-G base pair, as well as the slower rotation of the ClC amino group can be attributed to the electron-withdrawing inductive property of the 5-chloro substituent. The apparent similarity of duplexes containing mC and ClC demonstrated here is in accord with results of previous biochemical studies and further suggests that ClC is likely to be an unusually persistent form of DNA damage.

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A simple method is presented for projecting the conformation of extended secondary structure elements of peptides and proteins that extend over four C alpha atoms onto a simple two-dimensional surface. A new set of two degrees of freedom is defined, a pseudodihedral involving four sequential C alpha atoms, as well as the triple scalar product for the vectors describing the orientation of the three intervening peptide groups. The method provides a reduction in dimensionality, from the usual combination of multiple phi,psi pairs to a single pair, yielding valuable information concerning the structure and dynamics of these important elements. The new two-dimensional surface is explored by reference to 63 selected protein crystal structures together with a comparison of model built peptides representing the common secondary structural elements. Dynamical aspects on this new surface are examined using a molecular dynamics trajectory of Basic Pancreatic Trypsin Inhibitor.