Configurational entropy and cooperativity between ligand binding and dimerization in glycopeptide antibiotics

Oligomerization and ligand binding are thermodynamically cooperative processes in many biochemical systems, and the mechanisms giving rise to cooperative behavior are generally attributed to changes in structure. In glycopeptide antibiotics, however, these cooperative processes are not accompanied by significant structural changes. To investigate the mechanism by which cooperativity arises in these compounds, fully solvated molecular dynamics simulations and quasiharmonic normal-mode analysis were performed on chloroeremomycin, vancomycin, and dechlorovancomycin. Configurational entropies were derived from the vibrational modes recovered from ligand-free and ligand-bound forms of the monomeric and dimeric species. Results indicate that both ligand binding and dimerization incur an entropic cost as vibrational activity in the central core of the antibiotic is shifted to higher frequencies with lower amplitudes. Nevertheless, ligand binding and dimerization are cooperative because the entropic cost of both processes occurring together is less than the cost of these processes occurring separately. These reductions in configurational entropy are more than sufficient in magnitude to account for the experimentally observed cooperativity between dimerization and ligand binding. We conclude that biochemical cooperativity can be mediated through changes in vibrational activity, irrespective of the presence or absence of concomitant structural change. This may represent a general mechanism of allostery underlying cooperative phenomena in diverse macromolecular systems.