Reaction Mechanism of MutH Enzyme: Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics Study
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| Year of publication | 2010 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Enzymes are catalysts of many crucial reactions in living organisms. Therefore, the knowledge of their reaction mechanisms can be helpful in many fields such as biology, medicine or pharmacy. In our study, we are focused on MutH enzyme, which is an integral part of Methyl-directed Mismatch Repair together with MutL and MutS enzymes. A mismatch introduced during DNA replication is recognized by MutS enzyme, information about the mismatch is transferred through MutL to MutH enzyme. MutH specifically recognizes the GATC sequence on daughter DNA strand and cleaves this strand close to the G base. Wrongly paired base is removed and after that, the missing parts of DNA can be re-synthesized by the DNA polymerase and the correct base pairing is reestablished. Main goal of our project is the understanding of the reaction mechanism of MutH enzyme. We will present the Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics (QM/MM) study of the MutH enzyme reactivity based on models prepared from the available crystal structures of protein/DNA complex. The calcium ions present in crystal structures inhibit the cleavage reaction therefore these structures are assumed as pre-reaction complexes. The cleavage mechanism is studied on semiempirical level (Amber 10, PDDG/PM3) considering two possible nucleophiles (H2O and OH-). We are comparing two different models of the protein/DNA complexes with both inhibitors (Ca2+ ions) and activators (Mg2+ ions) of the cleavage reaction. Since the used level of theory gives only rough results, the major outcome of this study will be structure of the post-reaction complex, which has not been solved yet. |
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