Histone deacetylases (HDACs), together with histone acetyltransferases (HATs), regulate gene expression by modulating the acetylation level of chromatin. HDAC3 is implicated in many important cellular processes, particularly in cancer cell proliferation and metastasis, making inhibition of HDAC3 a promising epigenetic treatment for certain cancers. HDAC3 is activated upon complex formation with both inositol tetraphosphate (IP4) and the deacetylase-activating domain (DAD) of multi-protein nuclear receptor corepressor complexes. In previous studies, we have shown that binding of DAD and IP4 to HDAC3 significantly restricts its conformational space towards its stable ternary complex conformation, and suggest this to be the active conformation. Here, we report a single mutation of HDAC3 that is capable of mimicking the stabilizing effects of DAD and IP4, without the presence of either. This mutation, however, results in a total loss of deacetylase activity, prompting a closer evaluation of our understanding of the activation of HDAC3.

In most eubacteria, apicomplexans, and most plants, including the causal agents for diseases such as malaria, leprosy, and tuberculosis, the methylerythritol phosphate pathway is the route for the biosynthesis of the C(5) precursors to the essential isoprenoid class of compounds. Owing to their absence in humans, the enzymes of the methylerythritol phosphate pathway have become attractive targets for drug discovery. This work investigates a new class of inhibitors against the second enzyme of the pathway, 1-deoxy-D-xylulose 5-phosphate reductoisomerase. Inhibition of this enzyme may involve the chelation of a crucial active site Mn ion, and the metal-chelating moieties studied here have previously been shown to be successful in application to the zinc-dependent metalloproteinases. Quantum mechanics and docking calculations presented in this work suggest the transferability of these metal-chelating compounds to Mn-containing 1-deoxy-D-xylulose 5-phosphate reductoisomerase enzyme, as a promising starting point to the development of potent inhibitors.

Chagas' disease, caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), is a life-threatening illness affecting 11-18 million people. Currently available treatments are limited, with unacceptable efficacy and safety profiles. Recent studies have revealed an essential T. cruzi proline racemase enzyme (TcPR) as an attractive candidate for improved chemotherapeutic intervention. Conformational changes associated with substrate binding to TcPR are believed to expose critical residues that elicit a host mitogenic B-cell response, a process contributing to parasite persistence and immune system evasion. Characterization of the conformational states of TcPR requires access to long-time-scale motions that are currently inaccessible by standard molecular dynamics simulations. Here we describe advanced accelerated molecular dynamics that extend the effective simulation time and capture large-scale motions of functional relevance. Conservation and fragment mapping analyses identified potential conformational epitopes located in the vicinity of newly identified transient binding pockets. The newly identified open TcPR conformations revealed by this study along with knowledge of the closed to open interconversion mechanism advances our understanding of TcPR function. The results and the strategy adopted in this work constitute an important step toward the rationalization of the molecular basis behind the mitogenic B-cell response of TcPR and provide new insights for future structure-based drug discovery.

Derived from the extensive work in the area of small molecule zinc(II) ion sensors, chelating fragment libraries of quinoline- and benzimidazole-sulfonamides have been prepared and screened against several different zinc(II)-dependent matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). The fragments show impressive inhibition of these metalloenzymes and preferences for different MMPs based on the nature of the chelating group. The findings show that focused chelator libraries are a powerful strategy for the discovery of lead fragments for metalloprotein inhibition.

Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative agent of Chagas disease, a neglected tropical disease that represents one of the major health challenges of the Latin American countries. Successful efforts were made during the last few decades to control the transmission of this disease, but there is still no treatment for the 10 million adults in the chronic phase of the disease. In T. cruzi, as well as in other pathogens, the flavoenzyme UDP-galactopyranose mutase (UGM) catalyzes the conversion of UDP-galactopyranose to UDP-galactofuranose, a precursor of the cell surface β-galactofuranose that is involved in the virulence of the pathogen. The fact that UGM is not present in humans makes inhibition of this enzyme a good approach in the design of new Chagas therapeutics. By performing a series of computer simulations of T. cruzi UGM in the presence or absence of an active site ligand, we address the molecular details of the mechanism that controls the uptake and retention of the substrate. The simulations suggest a modular mechanism in which each moiety of the substrate controls the flexibility of a different protein loop. Furthermore, the calculations indicate that interactions with the substrate diphosphate moiety are especially important for stabilizing the closed active site. This hypothesis is supported with kinetics measurements of site-directed mutants of T. cruzi UGM. Our results extend our knowledge of UGM dynamics and offer new alternatives for the prospective design of drugs.

In this work, we critically assess the ability of the all-atom enhanced sampling method accelerated molecular dynamics (aMD) to investigate conformational changes in proteins that typically occur on the millisecond time scale. We combine aMD with the inherent power of graphics processor units (GPUs) and apply the implementation to the bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI). A 500 ns aMD simulation is compared to a previous millisecond unbiased brute force MD simulation carried out on BPTI, showing that the same conformational space is sampled by both approaches. To our knowledge, this represents the first implementation of aMD on GPUs and also the longest aMD simulation of a biomolecule run to date. Our implementation is available to the community in the latest release of the Amber software suite (v12), providing routine access to millisecond events sampled from dynamics simulations using off the shelf hardware.