Journal
ACS CHEMICAL NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 1, Issue 8, Pages 552-558Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/cn100026t
Keywords
Normal-mode analysis; ligand-gated ion channels; glycine alpha-1 receptor; anesthetic mechanism; elastic network model; lipid bilayer
Funding
- Stanford University Department of Anesthesia
- United States Department of Veterans Affairs
- National Institutes of Health
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We have previously used molecular modeling and normal-mode analyses combined with experimental data to visualize a plausible model of a transmembrane ligand-gated ion channel. We also postulated how the gating motion of the channel may be affected by the presence of various ligands, especially anesthetics. As is typical for normal-mode analyses, those studies were performed ut vacuo to reduce the computational complexity of the problem. While such calculations constitute an efficient way to model the large scale structural flexibility of transmembrane proteins, they can be criticized for neglecting the effects of an explicit phospholipid bilayer or hydrated environment. Here, we show the successful calculation of normal-mode motions for our model of a glycine alpha-1 receptor, now suspended in a fully hydrated lipid bilayer. Despite the almost uniform atomic density, the introduction of water and lipid does not grossly distort the overall gating motion. Normal-mode analysis revealed that even a fully immersed glycine alpha-1 receptor continues to demonstrate an iris-like channel gating motion as a low-frequency, high-amplitude natural harmonic vibration consistent with channel gating. Furthermore, the introduction of periodic boundary conditions allows the examination of simultaneous harmonic vibrations of lipid in synchrony with the protein gating motions that are compatible with reasonable lipid bilayer perturbations. While these perturbations tend to influence the overall protein motion, this work provides continued support for the iris-like motion model that characterizes gating within the family of ligand-gated ion channels.
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