The Effects of Ca2+ Concentration and E200K Mutation on the Aggregation Propensity of PrPC: A Computational Study

The propensity of cellular prion protein to aggregation is reputed essential for the initiation of the amyloid cascade that ultimately lead to the accumulation of neurotoxic aggregates. In this paper, we extended and applied an already reported computational workflow [Proteins 2015; 83: 1751-1765] to elucidate in details the aggregation propensity of PrP protein systems including wild type, wild type treated at different [Ca2+] and E200K mutant. The application of the computational procedure to two segments of PrPC, i.e. 125-228 and 120-231, allowed to emphasize how the inclusion of complete C-terminus and last portion (120-126) of the neurotoxic segment 106-126 may be crucial to unveil significant and unexpected interaction properties. Indeed, the anchoring of N-terminus on H2 domain detected in the wild type resulted to be disrupted upon either E200K mutation or Ca2+ binding, and to unbury hydrophobic spots on the PrPC surface. A peculiar dinuclear Ca2+ binding motif formed by the C-terminus and the S2-H2 loop was detected for [Ca2+] > 5 mM and showed similarities with binding motifs retraced in other protein systems, thus suggesting a possible functional meaning for its formation. Therefore, we potentiated the computational procedure by including a tool that clusterize the minima of molecular interaction fields of a proteinand delimit the regions of space with higher hydrophobic or higher hydrophilic character, hence, more likely involved in the self-assembly process. Plausible models for the self-assembly of either the E200K mutated or Ca2+-bound PrPC were sketched and discussed. The present investigation provides for structure-based information and new prompts that may represent a starting point for future experimental or computational works on the PrPC aggregation.