Mechanism of Iron-Dependent Repressor (IdeR) Activation and DNA Binding: A Molecular Dynamics and Protein Structure Network Study

PLoS Comput Biol. 2015 Dec 23;11(12):e1004500. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004500. eCollection 2015 Dec.

Abstract

Metalloproteins form a major class of enzymes in the living system that are involved in crucial biological functions such as catalysis, redox reactions and as 'switches' in signal transductions. Iron dependent repressor (IdeR) is a metal-sensing transcription factor that regulates free iron concentration in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. IdeR is also known to promote bacterial virulence, making it an important target in the field of therapeutics. Mechanistic details of how iron ions modulate IdeR such that it dimerizes and binds to DNA is not understood clearly. In this study, we have performed molecular dynamic simulations and integrated it with protein structure networks to study the influence of iron on IdeR structure and function. A significant structural variation between the metallated and the non-metallated system is observed. Our simulations clearly indicate the importance of iron in stabilizing its monomeric subunit, which in turn promotes dimerization. However, the most striking results are obtained from the simulations of IdeR-DNA complex in the absence of metals, where at the end of 100ns simulations, the protein subunits are seen to rapidly dissociate away from the DNA, thereby forming an excellent resource to investigate the mechanism of DNA binding. We have also investigated the role of iron as an allosteric regulator of IdeR that positively induces IdeR-DNA complex formation. Based on this study, a mechanistic model of IdeR activation and DNA binding has been proposed.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Bacterial Proteins / chemistry*
  • Bacterial Proteins / ultrastructure*
  • Binding Sites
  • DNA / chemistry*
  • DNA / ultrastructure*
  • Enzyme Activation
  • Kinetics
  • Models, Chemical*
  • Molecular Dynamics Simulation*
  • Nucleic Acid Conformation
  • Protein Binding
  • Protein Conformation
  • Repressor Proteins / chemistry*
  • Repressor Proteins / ultrastructure*
  • Substrate Specificity

Substances

  • Bacterial Proteins
  • IdeR protein, Mycobacterium tuberculosis
  • Repressor Proteins
  • DNA

Grants and funding

Computational facilities were provided by Molecular Biophysics Unit (funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), India) and by Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Also support was received from Microsoft Research, India. Emeritus Fellowship for SV and Research Fellowship for SG were awarded respectively by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT), India. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.