Global multi-method analysis of affinities and cooperativity in complex systems of macromolecular interactions

Cooperativity, multisite, and multicomponent interactions are hallmarks of biological systems of interacting macromolecules. Their thermodynamic characterization is often very challenging due to the notoriously low information content of binding isotherms. We introduce a strategy for the global multimethod analysis of data from multiple techniques (GMMA) that exploits enhanced information content emerging from the mutual constraints of the simultaneous modeling of orthogonal observables from calorimetric, spectroscopic, hydrodynamic, biosensing, or other thermodynamic binding experiments. We describe new approaches to address statistical problems that arise in the analysis of dissimilar data sets. The GMMA approach can significantly increase the complexity of interacting systems that can be accurately thermodynamically characterized.