title: Structural intermediates in a model of the substrate translocation path of the bacterial glutamate transporter homologue GltPh.
abstract: Excitatory amino acid transporters (EAATs) are membrane proteins responsible for reuptake of glutamate from the synaptic cleft to terminate neurotransmission and help prevent neurotoxically high, extracellular glutamate concentrations. Important structural information about these proteins emerged from crystal structures of GltPh, a bacterial homologue of EAATs, in conformations facing outward and inward. These remarkably different conformations are considered to be end points of the substrate translocation path (STP), suggesting that the transport mechanism involves major conformational rearrangements that remain uncharted. To investigate possible steps in the structural transitions of the STP between the two end-point conformations, we applied a combination of computational modeling methods (motion planning, molecular dynamics simulations, and mixed elastic network models). We found that the conformational changes in the transition involve mainly the repositioning the "transport domain" and the "trimerization domain" identified previously in the crystal structures. The two domains move in opposite directions along the membrane normal, and the transport domain also tilts by ∼17° with respect to this axis. Moreover, the TM3-4 loop undergoes a flexible, "restraining bar"-like conformational change with respect to the transport domain. As a consequence of these conformational rearrangements along the transition path we calculated a significant decrease of nearly 20% in the area of the transport-to-trimerization domain interface (TTDI). Water penetrates parts of the TTDI in the modeled intermediates but very much less in the end-point conformations. We show that these characteristics of the modeled intermediate states agree with experimental results from residue-accessibility studies in individual monomers and identify specific residues that can be used to test the proposed STP. Moreover, MD simulations of complete GltPh trimers constructed from initially identical monomer intermediates suggest that asymmetry can appear in the trimer, consonant with available experimental data showing independent transport kinetics by individual monomers in the trimers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University, 1300 York Avenue, New York, New York 10065, USA.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stolzenberg
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Khelashvili
authors.forename: Harel
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Weinstein
mesh_terms: D027322:Amino Acid Transport System X-AG / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D056004:Molecular Dynamics Simulation; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D020836:Protein Structure, Quaternary; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D027322:Amino Acid Transport System X-AG; D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D014867:Water