Working Paper Article Version 1 This version is not peer-reviewed

Phosphorylation, Mg-ADP, and Inhibitors Differentially Shape the Conformational Dynamics of the A-loop of Aurora-A

Version 1 : Received: 23 February 2021 / Approved: 25 February 2021 / Online: 25 February 2021 (11:20:09 CET)

How to cite: Musavizadeh, Z.; Grottesi, A.; Guarguaglini, G.; Paiardini, A. Phosphorylation, Mg-ADP, and Inhibitors Differentially Shape the Conformational Dynamics of the A-loop of Aurora-A. Preprints 2021, 2021020576 Musavizadeh, Z.; Grottesi, A.; Guarguaglini, G.; Paiardini, A. Phosphorylation, Mg-ADP, and Inhibitors Differentially Shape the Conformational Dynamics of the A-loop of Aurora-A. Preprints 2021, 2021020576

Abstract

The conformational state of the activation loop (A-loop) is pivotal for the activation of most protein kinases. Hence, the characterization of the conformational dynamics of the A-loop is important to increase our understanding of the molecular processes related to diseases and to support the discovery of small molecule kinase inhibitors. Here, we carry out a combination of Molecular Dynamics (MD) and Essential Dynamics (ED) analyses to fully map the effects of phosphorylation, ADP, and conformation disrupting (CD) inhibitors (i.e., CD532 and MLN8054) on the dynamics of the A-loop of Aurora-A. MD revealed that the stability of the A-loop in an open conformation is enhanced by single phospho-Thr-288, while paradoxically, the presence of second phosphorylation at Thr-287 decreases such stability and renders the A-loop more fluctuant in time and space. Moreover, we found that such post-translational modification has a significant effect on the direction of A-loop motions. ED analysis suggests that the presence of the phosphate moiety induces the dynamics of Aurora-A to sample two distinct energy minima, instead of a single large minimum, as in unphosphorylated Aurora-A states. This suggests that the conformational distributions of Aurora-A with both single and double phospho-threonine modifications are remarkably different from the unphosphorylated state. In the closed states, binding of CD532 and MLN8054 inhibitors has the effect of increasing the distance of the N- and C-lobes of the kinase domain of Aurora-A, and the angle analysis between those two lobes during MD simulations showed that the N- and C-lobes are kept more open in presence of CD532, compared to MLN8054. As the A-loop is a common feature of Aurora protein kinases, our studies provide a general description of the conformational dynamics of this structure upon phosphorylation and different ligands binding.

Keywords

Aurora-A; Molecular dynamics simulation; Activation loop; Conformational dynamics

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Comments (0)

We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.

Leave a public comment
Send a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
Views 0
Downloads 0
Comments 0
Metrics 0


×
Alerts
Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.
We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience.
Read more about our cookies here.