TY - JOUR AU - Robustelli, Paul AU - Ibanez de Opakua, Alain AU - Campbell-Bezat, Cecily AU - Giordanetto, Fabrizio AU - Becker, Stefan AU - Zweckstetter, Markus AU - Pan, Albert C AU - Shaw, David E TI - Molecular Basis of Small-Molecule Binding to α-Synuclein. JO - Journal of the American Chemical Society VL - 144 IS - 6 SN - 1520-5126 CY - Washington, DC PB - American Chemical Society M1 - DZNE-2022-00161 SP - 2501 - 2510 PY - 2022 N1 - (CC BY-NC-ND) AB - Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are implicated in many human diseases. They have generally not been amenable to conventional structure-based drug design, however, because their intrinsic conformational variability has precluded an atomic-level understanding of their binding to small molecules. Here we present long-time-scale, atomic-level molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of monomeric α-synuclein (an IDP whose aggregation is associated with Parkinson's disease) binding the small-molecule drug fasudil in which the observed protein-ligand interactions were found to be in good agreement with previously reported NMR chemical shift data. In our simulations, fasudil, when bound, favored certain charge-charge and π-stacking interactions near the C terminus of α-synuclein but tended not to form these interactions simultaneously, rather breaking one of these interactions and forming another nearby (a mechanism we term dynamic shuttling). Further simulations with small molecules chosen to modify these interactions yielded binding affinities and key structural features of binding consistent with subsequent NMR experiments, suggesting the potential for MD-based strategies to facilitate the rational design of small molecules that bind with disordered proteins. KW - 1-(5-Isoquinolinesulfonyl)-2-Methylpiperazine: analogs & derivatives KW - 1-(5-Isoquinolinesulfonyl)-2-Methylpiperazine: chemistry KW - 1-(5-Isoquinolinesulfonyl)-2-Methylpiperazine: metabolism KW - Amino Acid Sequence KW - Hydrogen Bonding KW - Intrinsically Disordered Proteins: chemistry KW - Intrinsically Disordered Proteins: metabolism KW - Ligands KW - Molecular Conformation KW - Molecular Dynamics Simulation KW - Protein Binding KW - Small Molecule Libraries: chemistry KW - Small Molecule Libraries: metabolism KW - alpha-Synuclein: metabolism KW - Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (NLM Chemicals) KW - Ligands (NLM Chemicals) KW - Small Molecule Libraries (NLM Chemicals) KW - alpha-Synuclein (NLM Chemicals) KW - 1-(5-Isoquinolinesulfonyl)-2-Methylpiperazine (NLM Chemicals) KW - fasudil (NLM Chemicals) LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 C6 - pmid:35130691 C2 - pmc:PMC8855421 DO - DOI:10.1021/jacs.1c07591 UR - https://pub.dzne.de/record/163399 ER -