Room Temperature Neutron Crystallography of Drug Resistant HIV-1 Protease Uncovers Limitations of X-ray Structural Analysis at 100 K

Oksana Gerlits, David A. Keen, Matthew P. Blakeley, John M. Louis, Irene T. Weber, Andrey Kovalevsky

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

HIV-1 protease inhibitors are crucial for treatment of HIV-1/AIDS, but their effectiveness is thwarted by rapid emergence of drug resistance. To better understand binding of clinical inhibitors to resistant HIV-1 protease, we used room-temperature joint X-ray/neutron (XN) crystallography to obtain an atomic-resolution structure of the protease triple mutant (V32I/I47V/V82I) in complex with amprenavir. The XN structure reveals a D+ ion located midway between the inner Oδ1 oxygen atoms of the catalytic aspartic acid residues. Comparison of the current XN structure with our previous XN structure of the wild-type HIV-1 protease-amprenavir complex suggests that the three mutations do not significantly alter the drug-enzyme interactions. This is in contrast to the observations in previous 100 K X-ray structures of these complexes that indicated loss of interactions by the drug with the triple mutant protease. These findings, thus, uncover limitations of structural analysis of drug binding using X-ray structures obtained at 100 K.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2018-2025
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Medicinal Chemistry
Volume60
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 9 2017

Funding

This research at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source was sponsored by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Biological and Environmental Research supported research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Structural Molecular Biology (CSMB), using facilities supported by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy. The authors thank Institut Laue Langevin (beamline LADI-III) for awarded neutron beamtime. I.T.W. was partly supported by NIH grant R01GM02920. J.M.L. was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIDDK, National Institutes of Health and the Intramural AIDS-Targeted Program of the Office of the Director, NIH. Notice: This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle LLC under DOE Contract No. DE-AC05- 00OR22725.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Room Temperature Neutron Crystallography of Drug Resistant HIV-1 Protease Uncovers Limitations of X-ray Structural Analysis at 100 K'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this