How ligands regulate the binding of PARP1 with DNA: Deciphering the mechanism at the molecular level

PLoS One. 2023 Aug 15;18(8):e0290176. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290176. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

The catalytic (CAT) domain is a key region of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1), which has crucial interactions with inhibitors, DNA, and other domains of PARP1. To facilitate the development of potential inhibitors of PARP1, it is of great significance to clarify the differences in structural dynamics and key residues between CAT/inhibitors and DNA/PARP1/inhibitors through structure-based computational design. In this paper, conformational changes in PAPR1 and differences in key residue interactions induced by inhibitors were revealed at the molecular level by comparative molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and energy decomposition. On one hand, PARP1 inhibitors indirectly change some residues of the CAT domain which interact with DNA and other domains. Furthermore, the interaction between ligands and catalytic binding sites can be transferred to the DNA recognition domain of PARP1 by a strong negative correlation movement among multi-domains of PARP1. On the other hand, it is not reliable to use the binding energy of CAT/ligand as a measure of ligand activity, because it may in some cases differs greatly from the that of PARP1/DNA/ligand. For PARP1/DNA/ligand, the stronger the binding stability between the ligand and PARP1, the stronger the binding stability between PARP1 and DNA. The findings of this work can guide further novel inhibitor design and the structural modification of PARP1 through structure-based computational design.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Binding Sites
  • Catalytic Domain
  • DNA Repair
  • DNA* / metabolism
  • Ligands
  • Poly (ADP-Ribose) Polymerase-1 / genetics
  • Poly(ADP-ribose) Polymerases* / metabolism

Substances

  • Poly(ADP-ribose) Polymerases
  • Ligands
  • Poly (ADP-Ribose) Polymerase-1
  • DNA

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 21803079. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.