Signature of functional enzyme dynamics in quasielastic neutron scattering spectra: The case of phosphoglycerate kinase

Abstract

We present an analysis of high-resolution quasi-elastic neutron scattering spectra of phosphoglycerate kinase which elucidates the influence of the enzymatic activity on the dynamics of the protein. We show that in the active state the inter-domain motions are amplified and the intra-domain asymptotic power-law relaxation ∝t-α is accelerated, with a reduced coefficient α. Employing an energy landscape picture of protein dynamics, this observation can be translated into a widening of the distribution of energy barriers separating conformational substates of the protein.