期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2010
卷号：107
期号：17
页码：7775-7780
DOI：10.1073/pnas.0912978107
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：A statistical mechanical model of allosteric transitions in proteins is developed by extending the structure-based model of protein folding to cases of multiple native conformations. The partition function is calculated exactly within the model and the free-energy surface reflecting allostery is derived. This approach is applied to an example protein, the receiver domain of the bacterial enhancer-binding protein NtrC. The model predicts the large entropy associated with a combinatorial number of preexisting transition routes. This large entropy lowers the free-energy barrier of the allosteric transition, which explains the large structural fluctuation observed in the NMR data of NtrC. The global allosteric transformation of NtrC is explained by the shift of preexisting distribution of conformations upon phosphorylation, but the local structural adjustment around the phosphorylation site is explained by the complementary induced-fit mechanism. Structural disordering accompanied by fluctuating interactions specific to two allosteric conformations underlies a large number of routes of allosteric transition.
关键词：free-energy landscape ; population shift ; statistical mechanical model
