Aoife C. Fogarty

Water dynamics in protein hydration shells: the molecular origins of the dynamical perturbation.

Protein hydration shell dynamics play an important role in biochemical processes including protein folding, enzyme function, and molecular recognition. We present here a comparison of the reorientation dynamics of individual water molecules within the hydration shell of a series of globular proteins: acetylcholinesterase, subtilisin Carlsberg, lysozyme, and ubiquitin. Molecular dynamics simulations and analytical models are used to access site-resolved information on hydration shell dynamics and to elucidate the molecular origins of the dynamical perturbation of hydration shell water relative to bulk water. We show that all four proteins have very similar hydration shell dynamics, despite their wide range of sizes and functions, and differing secondary structures. We demonstrate that this arises from the similar local surface topology and surface chemical composition of the four proteins, and that such local factors alone are sufficient to rationalize the hydration shell dynamics. We propose that these conclusions can be generalized to a wide range of globular proteins. We also show that protein conformational fluctuations induce a dynamical heterogeneity within the hydration layer. We finally address the effect of confinement on hydration shell dynamics via a site-resolved analysis and connect our results to experiments via the calculation of two-dimensional infrared spectra.

Biomolecular hydration dynamics: a jump model perspective

The dynamics of water molecules within the hydration shell surrounding a biomolecule can have a crucial influence on its biochemical function. Characterizing their properties and the extent to which they differ from those of bulk water have thus been long-standing questions. Following a tutorial approach, we review the recent advances in this field and the different approaches which have probed the dynamical perturbation experienced by water in the vicinity of proteins or DNA. We discuss the molecular factors causing this perturbation, and describe how they change with temperature. We finally present more biologically relevant cases beyond the dilute aqueous situation. A special focus is on the jump model for water reorientation and hydrogen bond rearrangement.

Dynamical Disorder in the DNA Hydration Shell

The reorientation and hydrogen-bond dynamics of water molecules within the hydration shell of a B-DNA dodecamer, which are of interest for many of its biochemical functions, are investigated via molecular dynamics simulations and an analytic jump model, which provide valuable new molecular level insights into these dynamics. Different sources of heterogeneity in the hydration shell dynamics are determined. First, a pronounced spatial heterogeneity is found at the DNA interface and explained via the jump model by the diversity in local DNA interfacial topographies and DNA-water H-bond interactions. While most of the hydration shell is moderately retarded with respect to the bulk, some water molecules confined in the narrow minor groove exhibit very slow dynamics. An additional source of heterogeneity is found to be caused by the DNA conformational fluctuations, which modulate the water dynamics. The groove widening aids the approach of, and the jump to, a new water H-bond partner. This temporal heterogeneity is especially strong in the minor groove, where groove width fluctuations occur on the same time scale as the water H-bond rearrangements, leading to a strong dynamical disorder. The usual simplifying assumption that hydration shell dynamics is much faster than DNA dynamics is thus not valid; our results show that biomolecular conformational fluctuations are essential to facilitate the water motions and accelerate the hydration dynamics in confined groove sites.

Adaptive resolution simulation of a biomolecule and its hydration shell: Structural and dynamical properties

A fully atomistic modelling of many biophysical and biochemical processes at biologically relevant length- and time scales is beyond our reach with current computational resources, and one approach to overcome this difficulty is the use of multiscale simulation techniques. In such simulations, when system properties necessitate a boundary between resolutions that falls within the solvent region, one can use an approach such as the Adaptive Resolution Scheme (AdResS), in which solvent particles change their resolution on the fly during the simulation. Here, we apply the existing AdResS methodology to biomolecular systems, simulating a fully atomistic protein with an atomistic hydration shell, solvated in a coarse-grained particle reservoir and heat bath. Using as a test case an aqueous solution of the regulatory protein ubiquitin, we first confirm the validity of the AdResS approach for such systems, via an examination of protein and solvent structural and dynamical properties. We then demonstrate how, in addition to providing a computational speedup, such a multiscale AdResS approach can yield otherwise inaccessible physical insights into biomolecular function. We use our methodology to show that protein structure and dynamics can still be correctly modelled using only a few shells of atomistic water molecules. We also discuss aspects of the AdResS methodology peculiar to biomolecular simulations.

Advantages and challenges in coupling an ideal gas to atomistic models in adaptive resolution simulations

In adaptive resolution simulations, molecular fluids are modeled employing different levels of resolution in different subregions of the system. When traveling from one region to the other, particles change their resolution on the fly. One of the main advantages of such approaches is the computational efficiency gained in the coarse-grained region. In this respect the best coarse-grained system to employ in the low resolution region would be the ideal gas, making intermolecular force calculations in the coarse-grained subdomain redundant. In this case, however, a smooth coupling is challenging due to the high energetic imbalance between typical liquids and a system of non-interacting particles. In the present work, we investigate this approach, using as a test case the most biologically relevant fluid, water. We demonstrate that a successful coupling of water to the ideal gas can be achieved with current adaptive resolution methods, and discuss the issues that remain to be addressed.

Reorientational Dynamics of Water Confined in Zeolites

We present a detailed molecular-dynamics study of water reorientation and hydrogen-bond dynamics in a strong confinement situation, within the narrow pores of an all-silica Linde type A (LTA) zeolite. Two water loadings of the zeolite are compared with the bulk case. Water dynamics are retarded in this extreme hydrophobic confinement and the slowdown is more pronounced at higher water loading. We show that water reorientation proceeds mainly by large-amplitude angular jumps, whose mechanism is similar to that determined in the bulk. The slowdown upon hydrophobic confinement arises predominantly from an excluded-volume effect on the large fraction of water molecules lying at the interface with the zeolite matrix, with an additional minor contribution coming from a structuring effect induced by the confinement.

Origins of the non-exponential reorientation dynamics of nanoconfined water

The dynamics of water are dramatically modified upon confinement in nanoscale hydrophilic silica pores. In particular, the OH reorientation dynamics of the interfacial water are non-exponential and dramatically slowed relative to the bulk liquid. A detailed analysis of molecular dynamics simulations is carried out to elucidate the microscopic origins of this behavior. The results are analyzed in the context of the extended jump model for water that describes the reorientation as a combination of hydrogen-bond exchanges, or jumps, and rotation of intact hydrogen bonds, with the former representing the dominant contribution. Within this model, the roles of surface and dynamical heterogeneities are considered by spatially resolving the hydrogen-bond jump dynamics into individual sites on the silica pore surface. For each site the dynamics is nearly mono-exponential, indicating that dynamical heterogeneity is at most a minor influence, while the distribution of these individual site jump times is broad. The non-exponential dynamics can also not be attributed to enthalpic contributions to the barriers to hydrogen-bond exchanges. Two entropic effects related to the surface roughness are found to explain the retarded and diverse dynamics: those associated with the approach of a new hydrogen-bond acceptor and with the breaking of the initial hydrogen-bond.

Temperature dependence of hydrophobic hydration dynamics: from retardation to acceleration.

The perturbation induced by a hydrophobic solute on water dynamics is essential in many biochemical processes, but its mechanism and magnitude are still debated. A stringent test of the different proposed pictures is provided by recent NMR measurements by Qvist and Halle (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 10345-10353) which showed that, unexpectedly, the perturbation changes in a non-monotonic fashion when the solution is cooled below room temperature. Here we perform and analyze molecular dynamics simulations of a small paradigm amphiphilic solute, trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), in dilute aqueous solutions over the 218-350 K temperature range. We first show that our simulations properly reproduce the non-monotonic temperature dependence. We then develop a model which combines our previously suggested entropic excluded-volume effect with a perturbation factor arising from the difference between local structural fluctuations in the shell and the bulk. Our model provides a detailed molecular understanding of the hydrophobic perturbation over the full temperature range investigated. It shows that the excluded-volume factor brings a dominant temperature-independent contribution to the perturbation at all temperatures, and provides a very good approximation at room temperature. The non-monotonic temperature dependence of the perturbation is shown to arise from the structural factor and mostly from relative shifts between the shell and bulk distributions of local structures, whose amplitude remains very small compared to the widths of those distributions.

Adaptive Resolution Simulations with Self-Adjusting High-Resolution Regions.

In adaptive resolution simulations, different regions of a simulation box are modeled with different levels of detail. Particles change their resolution on-the-fly when traveling from one subregion to the other. This method is particularly useful for studying multiscale systems in which effects on a broad range of length and time scales play a role. Until now, the geometry of the high-resolution region has been limited to simple geometries of spherical, cuboid, or cylindrical form, whose shape does not change during the simulation. However, many phenomena involve changes in size and shape of system components, for example, protein folding, polymer collapse, nucleation, and crystallization. In this work, we develop a scheme that uses a series of overlapping spheres to allow for an arbitrary division of space into domains of different levels of resolution. Furthermore, the geometry is automatically adjusted on-the-fly during the simulation according to changes in size and shape of, for example, a solvated macromolecule within the high-resolution region. The proposed approach is validated on liquid water. We then simulate the folding of an atomistically detailed polypeptide solvated in a shell of atomistic water that changes shape as the peptide conformation changes. We demonstrate that the peptide folding process is unperturbed by the use of our methodology.

A multi‐resolution model to capture both global fluctuations of an enzyme and molecular recognition in the ligand‐binding site

In multi‐resolution simulations, different system components are simultaneously modeled at different levels of resolution, these being smoothly coupled together. In the case of enzyme systems, computationally expensive atomistic detail is needed in the active site to capture the chemistry of ligand binding. Global properties of the rest of the protein also play an essential role, determining the structure and fluctuations of the binding site; however, these can be modeled on a coarser level. Similarly, in the most computationally efficient scheme only the solvent hydrating the active site requires atomistic detail. We present a methodology to couple atomistic and coarse‐grained protein models, while solvating the atomistic part of the protein in atomistic water. This allows a free choice of which protein and solvent degrees of freedom to include atomistically. This multi‐resolution methodology can successfully model stable ligand binding, and we further confirm its validity by exploring the reproduction of system properties relevant to enzymatic function. In addition to a computational speedup, such an approach can allow the identification of the essential degrees of freedom playing a role in a given process, potentially yielding new insights into biomolecular function. Proteins 2016; 84:1902–1913.