Recent experiments suggested that
adenosine triphosphate (ATP)
can regulate liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) of various
proteins and inhibit protein aggregations at its physiological concentration,
which is highly correlated with the nonspecific interactions of ATP
to a wide variety of proteins. However, the mechanism underlying the
general binding capability of ATP largely remains unclear. In this
work, we used molecular dynamics simulation to study the binding of
ATPs to three proteins with distinct net charges: TDP-43 NTD (−7
e), TAF15-RRM (0 e), HWEL (+8 e). Negatively charged ATP exhibits
a strong trend to accumulate around all of these proteins. While only
a fraction of the accumulated ATPs directly binds to the limited regions
of the protein surface, additional ATPs indirectly bind to proteins
by aggregating into ATP clusters. Hence, the proportion of the directly
bound ATPs in the clusters as well as their binding regions can be
adjusted in response to different proteins, which makes ATP well adapted
to a variety of proteins. Moreover, our results suggest that ATP tightly
binds to Arg with high affinity, and Arg dominates the direct binding
of ATP. Meanwhile, Arg also affects the self-association of accumulated
ATPs. The size of the ATP cluster is effectively regulated by the
distribution of Arg. Considering the ubiquity of Arg in proteins,
our findings are helpful to understand the general binding capability
of ATP.