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Title: Secondary structure of rat and human amylin across force fields

Journal Article · · PLoS ONE
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, IL (United States)
  2. National Cheng Kung Univ., Tainan (Taiwan)
  3. Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, IL (United States); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

The aggregation of human amylin has been strongly implicated in the progression of Type II diabetes. This 37-residue peptide forms a variety of secondary structures, including random coils, α-helices, and β- hairpins. The balance between these structures depends on the chemical environment, making amylin an ideal candidate to examine inherent biases in force fields. Rat amylin differs from human amylin by only 6 residues; however, it does not form fibrils. Therefore it provides a useful complement to human amylin in studies of the key events along the aggregation pathway. In this work, the free energy of rat and human amylin was determined as a function of α-helix and β-hairpin content for the Gromos96 53a6, OPLS-AA/L, CHARMM22/CMAP, CHARMM22*, Amberff99sb*-ILDN, and Amberff03w force fields using advanced sampling techniques, specifically bias exchange metadynamics. This work represents a first systematic attempt to evaluate the conformations and the corresponding free energy of a large, clinically relevant disordered peptide in solution across force fields. The NMR chemical shifts of rIAPP were calculated for each of the force fields using their respective free energy maps, allowing us to quantitatively assess their predictions. We show that the predicted distribution of secondary structures is sensitive to the choice of force-field: Gromos53a6 is biased towards β-hairpins, while CHARMM22/CMAP predicts structures that are overly α-helical. OPLS-AA/L favors disordered structures. Amberff99sb*-ILDN, AmberFF03w and CHARMM22* provide the balance between secondary structures that is most consistent with available experimental data. In contrast to previous reports, our findings suggest that the equilibrium conformations of human and rat amylin are remarkably similar, but that subtle differences arise in transient alpha-helical and beta-strand containing structures that the human peptide can more readily adopt. We hypothesize that these transient states enable dynamic pathways that facilitate the formation of aggregates and, eventually, amyloid fibrils.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1249116
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1212376; OSTI ID: 1395962
Journal Information:
PLoS ONE, Vol. 10, Issue 7; ISSN 1932-6203
Publisher:
Public Library of ScienceCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 54 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Revealing a Dual Role of Ganglioside Lipids in the Aggregation of Membrane-Associated Islet Amyloid Polypeptide journal June 2019
Synergistic long-range effects of mutations underlie aggregation propensities of amylin analogues journal August 2019
Influence of fullerenol on hIAPP aggregation: amyloid inhibition and mechanistic aspects journal January 2019
Extensive tests and evaluation of the CHARMM36IDPSFF force field for intrinsically disordered proteins and folded proteins journal January 2019
Early-stage human islet amyloid polypeptide aggregation: Mechanisms behind dimer formation journal July 2018
Phase space and collective variable based simulation methods for studies of rare events journal June 2019
Secondary structures transition of tau protein with intrinsically disordered proteins specific force field journal October 2018
Seed-Induced Heterogeneous Cross-Seeding Self-Assembly of Human and Rat Islet Polypeptides journal March 2017
Site-specific detection of protein secondary structure using 2D IR dihedral indexing: a proposed assembly mechanism of oligomeric hIAPP journal January 2018
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