The V57E pathological variant of the mitochondrial coiled-coil-helix–coiled-coil-helix
domain-containing protein 10 (CHCHD10) plays a role in frontotemporal
dementia. The wild-type and V57E mutant CHCHD10 proteins contain intrinsically
disordered regions, and therefore, these regions hampered structural
characterization of these proteins using conventional experimental
tools. For the first time in the literature, we represent that the
V57E mutation is pathogenic to mitochondria as it increases mitochondrial
superoxide and impairs mitochondrial respiration. In addition, we
represent here the structural ensemble properties of the V57E mutant
CHCHD10 and describe the impacts of V57E mutation on the structural
ensembles of wild-type CHCHD10 in aqueous solution. We conducted experimental
and computational studies for this research. Namely, MitoSOX Red staining
and Seahorse Mito Stress experiments, atomic force microscopy measurements,
bioinformatics, homology modeling, and multiple-run molecular dynamics
simulation computational studies were conducted. Our experiments show
that the V57E mutation results in mitochondrial dysfunction, and our
computational studies present that the structural ensemble properties
of wild-type CHCHD10 are impacted by the frontotemporal dementia-associated
V57E genetic mutation.