Dynamics of Human Serum Transferrin in Varying Physicochemical Conditions Explored by Using Molecular Dynamics Simulations

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Conformational stability of human serum transferrin (Tf) at varying pH values and salt and excipient concentrations were investigated using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and the results are compared with previously published small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) experiments. SAXS study showed that at pH 5, Tf is predominantly present in a partially open (PO) form, and the factions of PO differ based on the physicochemical condition and drift toward the closed form (HO) as the pH increases. Tf is a bilobal glycoprotein that is composed of homologous halves termed the N- and C-lobes. The current study shows that the protonation of Y188 and K206 at pH 5 is the primary conformational drive into PO, which shifts toward the closed (HO) conformer as the pH increases. Furthermore, at pH 6.5, PO is unfavorable due to negative charge-charge repulsion at the N/C-lobe interface linker region causing increased hinge distance when compared to HO, which has favorable attractive electrostatic interactions in this region. Subsequently, the effect of salt concentration was studied at 70 and 140 mM NaCl. At 70 mM NaCl and pH 5, chloride ions bind strongly in the N-lobe iron-binding site, whereas these interactions are weak at pH 6.5. With increasing salt concentration at pH 5, the regions surrounding the N-lobe iron-binding site are saturated, and as a consequence, sodium and chloride ions accumulate into the bulk. Additionally, protein-excipient interactions were investigated. At pH 5, the excipients interact in similar loop regions, E89-T93, and D416-D420, located in the N- and C-lobes of the HO conformer, respectively. It is anticipated that interactions of additives in these two loop regions cause conformational changes that lead to iron-coordinating residues in the N-lobe to drift away from iron and thus drive HO to PO conversion. Furthermore, at pH 6.5 and 140 mM histidine, these interactions are negligible leading to the stabilization of HO.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMolecular Pharmaceutics
Volume19
Issue number8
Pages (from-to)2795-2806
Number of pages12
ISSN1543-8384
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was funded by a project part of the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 675074 – “Protein–Excipient Interactions and Protein–Protein Interactions in Formulation” (PIPPI); http://www.pippi.kemi.dtu.dk . We used VMD 1.9.3, pymol 1.8.4.2, and jupyter notebook plugins for performing analyses or making the graphical images. Simulations were carried out on the CPU/GPU cluster at DTU Chemistry and the High-Performance Computing cluster at DTU. Dan Scatt is acknowledged for funding the SAXS trip. EMBL P12 DESY and EMBL B29 ESRF are acknowledged for providing beam time for conducting the SAXS experiments, and Albumedix, Ltd., is acknowledged for kindly providing recombinant transferrin.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Chemical Society.

    Research areas

  • aggregation, conformational stability, excipient, human serum transferrin, interactions hotspot, molecular dynamics simulations, small-angle X-ray scattering

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