Abstract
The envelope (E) protein of Dengue virus rearranges to a trimeric hairpin to mediate fusion of the viral and target membranes, which is essential for infectivity. Insertion of E into the target membrane serves to anchor E and possibly also to disrupt local order within the membrane. Both aspects are likely to be affected by the depth of insertion, orientation of the trimer with respect to the membrane normal, and the interactions that form between trimer and membrane. In the present work, we resolved the depth of insertion, the tilt angle, and the fundamental interactions for the soluble portion of Dengue E trimers (sE) associated with planar lipid bilayer membranes of various combinations of 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC), 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phospho-rac-glycerol (POPG), 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine (POPE), and cholesterol (CHOL) by neutron reflectivity (NR) and by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The results show that the tip of E containing the fusion loop (FL) is located at the interface of the headgroups and acyl chains of the outer leaflet of the lipid bilayers, in good agreement with prior predictions. The results also indicate that E tilts with respect to the membrane normal upon insertion, promoted by either the anionic lipid POPG or CHOL. The simulations show that tilting of the protein correlates with hydrogen bond formation between lysines and arginines located on the sides of the trimer close to the tip (K246, K247, and R73) and nearby lipid headgroups. These hydrogen bonds provide a major contribution to the membrane anchoring and may help to destabilize the target membrane.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1216-1230 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Biomembranes |
| Volume | 1860 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2018 |
Funding
This work was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program at Sandia National Laboratories, a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525. This work was also supported by NIH grant R01 AI075647 (to M.K.). This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences user facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Contract DE-AC52-06NA25396) and Sandia National Laboratories. We gratefully acknowledge support from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency -Joint Science and Technology Office for Chemical and Biological Defense (IAA number DTRA10027IA-3167 ). We acknowledge the support of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce , in providing the neutron research facilities used in this work. Research was performed in part at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. This work was supported by the NIST IMS program “Precision Measurements for Integral Membrane Proteins”. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number OCI-1053575. Specifically, it used the Bridges system, which is supported by NSF award number ACI-1445606, at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC). Certain commercial materials, equipment, and instruments are identified in this work to describe the experimental procedure as completely as possible. In no case does such an identification imply a recommendation or endorsement by NIST, nor does it imply that the materials, equipment, or instrument identified are necessarily the best available for the purpose.
Keywords
- Dengue virus
- Envelope protein
- Fundamental interactions
- Membrane fusion
- Molecular dynamics simulations
- Neutron reflectivity