Public Time:
2021-04-27 00:00:00
Journal:
PNAS
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2024928118
Author:
Joshua Pajak,Rockney Atz,Brendan J. Hilbert,Marc C. Morais,Brian A. Kelch,Paul J. Jardine,Gaurav Arya
Summary:
Many biological processes are performed by ring-shaped molecular motors that harvest energy from ATP hydrolysis to move DNA, RNA, or protein substrate through their central pores. However, it is not clear how these proteins couple their physical movement to the chemical steps of ATP hydrolysis. Here, we derive the molecular mechanism by which viral DNA packaging motors couple ATP binding to DNA gripping and ATP hydrolysis to DNA release. We first predict the coupling pathway computationally with molecular dynamics simulations and then validate our predictions experimentally with structural and functional measurements. The mechanism derived and presented here could be broadly applicable to all ring ATPase motors.
The atomic coordinates and associated X-ray diffraction data have been deposited in the PDB:
(PDB ID code: [7KS4][1]).
[1]: http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/explore/explore.do?structureId=7KS4