Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 9, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0096031
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Strategischer Forschungsfonds of the Heinrich-Heine-University, Dusseldorf
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Human heat shock protein of 90 kDa (hHsp90) is a homodimer that has an essential role in facilitating malignant transformation at the molecular level. Inhibiting hHsp90 function is a validated approach for treating different types of tumors. Inhibiting the dimerization of hHsp90 via its C-terminal domain (CTD) should provide a novel way to therapeutically interfere with hHsp90 function. Here, we predicted hot spot residues that cluster in the CTD dimerization interface by a structural decomposition of the effective energy of binding computed by the MM-GBSA approach and confirmed these predictions using in silico alanine scanning with DrugScore(PPI). Mutation of these residues to alanine caused a significant decrease in the melting temperature according to differential scanning fluorimetry experiments, indicating a reduced stability of the mutant hHsp90 complexes. Size exclusion chromatography and multi-angle light scattering studies demonstrate that the reduced stability of the mutant hHsp90 correlates with a lower complex stoichiometry due to the disruption of the dimerization interface. These results suggest that the identified hot spot residues can be used as a pharmacophoric template for identifying and designing small-molecule inhibitors of hHsp90 dimerization.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available