Conformational Transition of Response Regulator RR468 in a Two-Component System Signal Transduction Process

Signal transduction can be accomplished via a two-component system (TCS) consisting of a histidine kinase (HK) and a response regulator (RR). In this work, we simulate the response regulator RR468 from Thermotoga maritima, in which phosphorylation and dephosphorylation of a conserved aspartate residue acts as a switch via a large conformational change concentrated in three proximal loops. A detailed view of the conformational transition is obscured by the lack of stability of the intermediate states, which are difficult to detect using common structural biology techniques. Molecular dynamics (MD) trajectories of the inactive and active conformations were run, and show that the inactive (or active) trajectories do not exhibit sampling of the active (or inactive) conformations on this time scale. Targeted MD (TMD) was used to generate trajectories that span the inactive and active conformations and provide a view of how a localized event like phosphorylation can lead to conformational changes elsewhere in the protein, especially in the three proximal loops. The TMD trajectories are clustered to identify stages along the transition path. Residue interaction networks are identified that point to key residues having to rearrange in the process of transition. These are identified using both hydrogen bond analysis and residue interaction strength measurements. Potentials of mean force are generated for key residue rearrangements to ascertain their free energy barriers. We introduce methods that attempt to extrapolate from one conformation to the other and find that the most fluctuating proximal loop can transit part way from one to the other, suggesting that this conformational information is embedded in the sequence.