Protein storytelling through physics

doi:10.1126/science.aaz3041

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.aaz3041
	Protein storytelling through physics
	Emiliano Brini; Carlos Simmerling; Ken Dill
	2020-11-27
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2020
英文摘要	Computational molecular physics (CMP) aims to leverage the laws of physics to understand not just static structures but also the motions and actions of biomolecules. Applying CMP to proteins has required either simplifying the physical models or running simulations that are shorter than the time scale of the biological activity. Brini et al. reviewed advances that are moving CMP to time scales that match biological events such as protein folding, ligand unbinding, and some conformational changes. They also highlight the role of blind competitions in driving the field forward. New methods such as deep learning approaches are likely to make CMP an increasingly powerful tool in describing proteins in action. Science , this issue p. [eaaz3041][1] ### BACKGROUND Understanding biology, particularly at the level of actionable drug discovery, is often a matter of developing accurate stories about how proteins work. This requires understanding the physics of the system, and physics-based computer modeling is a prime tool for that. However, the computational molecular physics (CMP) of proteins has previously been much too expensive and slow. A large fraction of public supercomputing resources worldwide is currently running CMP simulations of biologically relevant systems. We review here the history and status of this large and diverse scientific enterprise. Among other things, protein modeling has driven major computer hardware advances, such as IBM's Blue Gene and DE Shaw's Anton computers. Further, protein modeling has advanced rapidly over 50 years, even slightly faster than Moore's law. We also review an interesting scientific social construct that has arisen around protein modeling: community-wide blind competitions. They have transformed how we test, validate, and improve our computational models of proteins. ### ADVANCES For 50 years, two approaches to computer modeling have been mainstays for developing stories about protein molecules and their biological actions. (i) Inferences from structure-property relations: Based on the principle that a protein's action depends on its shape, it is possible to use databases of known proteins to learn about unknown proteins. (ii) Computational molecular physics uses force fields of atom-atom interactions, sampled by molecular dynamics (MD), to develop biological action stories that satisfy principles of chemistry and thermodynamics. CMP has traditionally been computationally costly, limited to studying only simple actions of small proteins. But CMP has recently advanced enormously. (i) Force fields and their corresponding solvent models are now sufficiently accurate at capturing the molecular interactions, and conformational searching and sampling methods are sufficiently fast, that CMP is able to model, fairly accurately, protein actions on time scales longer than microseconds, and sometimes milliseconds. So, we are now accessing important biological events, such as protein folding, unbinding, allosteric change, and assembly. (ii) Just as car races do for auto manufacturers, communal blind tests such as protein structure-prediction events are giving protein modelers a shared evaluation venue for improving our methods. CMP methods are now competing and often doing quite well. (iii) New methods are harnessing external information—like experimental structural data—to accelerate CMP, notably, while preserving proper physics. What are we learning? For one thing, a long-standing hypothesis is that proteins fold by multiple different microscopic routes, a story that is too granular to learn from experiments alone. CMP recently affirmed this principle while giving accurate and testable microscopic details, protein by protein. In addition, CMP is now contributing to physico-chemical drug design. Structure-based methods of drug discovery have long been able to discern what small-molecule drug candidates might bind to a given target protein and where on the protein they might bind. However, such methods don't reveal some all-important physical properties needed for drug discovery campaigns—the affinities and the on- and off-rates of the ligand binding to the protein. CMP is beginning to compute these properties accurately. A third example is shown in the figure. It shows the spike protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of today's coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. A large, hinge-like movement of this sizable protein is the critical action needed for the virus to enter and infect the human cell. The only way to see the details of this motion—to attempt to block it with drugs—is by CMP. The figure shows CMP simulation results of three dynamical states of this motion. ### OUTLOOK A cell's behavior is due to the actions of its thousands of different proteins. Every protein has its own story to tell. CMP is a granular and principled tool that is able to discover those stories. CMP is now being tested and improved through blind communal validations. It is attacking ever larger proteins, exploring increasingly bigger and slower motions, and with ever more accurate physics. We are reaching a physical understanding of biology at the microscopic level as CMP reveals causations and forces, step-by-step actions in space and time, conformational distributions along the way, and important physical quantities such as free energies, rates, and equilibrium constants. ![Figure][2] CMP modeling of COVID-19 infecting the human cell. SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein (green, with its glycan shield in yellow) attaching to the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor protein (purple) through its spike receptor-binding domain (red). (Left) The receptor binding domain (RBD) is hidden. (Middle) The RBD is open and accessible. (Right) The RBD binds human ACE2 receptor. This is followed by a cascade of larger conformational changes in the spike protein, leading to viral fusion to the human host cell. Credit: Lucy Fallon Every protein has a story—how it folds, what it binds, its biological actions, and how it misbehaves in aging or disease. Stories are often inferred from a protein’s shape (i.e., its structure). But increasingly, stories are told using computational molecular physics (CMP). CMP is rooted in the principled physics of driving forces and reveals granular detail of conformational populations in space and time. Recent advances are accessing longer time scales, larger actions, and blind testing, enabling more of biology’s stories to be told in the language of atomistic physics. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaz3041 [2]: pending:yes
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/304873
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Emiliano Brini,Carlos Simmerling,Ken Dill. Protein storytelling through physics[J]. Science,2020.
APA	Emiliano Brini,Carlos Simmerling,&Ken Dill.(2020).Protein storytelling through physics.Science.
MLA	Emiliano Brini,et al."Protein storytelling through physics".Science (2020).