Revisiting the protomotive vectorial motion of F₀-ATPase

The elucidation of the detailed mechanism used by F₀ to convert proton gradient to torque and rotational motion presents a major puzzle despite significant biophysical and structural progress. Although the conceptual model has advanced our understanding of the working principles of such systems, it is crucial to explore the actual mechanism using structure-based models that actually reproduce a unidirectional proton-driven rotation. Our previous work used a coarse-grained (CG) model to simulate the action of F₀ However, the simulations were based on a very tentative structural model of the interaction between subunit a and subunit c. Here, we again use a CG model but with a recent cryo-EM structure of cF₁F₀ and also explore the proton path using our water flooding and protein dipole Langevin dipole semimacroscopic formalism with its linear response approximation version (PDLD/S-LRA) approaches. The simulations are done in the combined space defined by the rotational coordinate and the proton transport coordinate. The study reproduced the effect of the protomotive force on the rotation of the F₀ while establishing the electrostatic origin of this effect. Our landscape reproduces the correct unidirectionality of the synthetic direction of the F₀ rotation and shows that it reflects the combined electrostatic coupling between the proton transport path and the c-ring conformational change. This work provides guidance for further studies in other proton-driven mechanochemical systems and should lead (when combined with studies of F₁) to a complete energy transduction picture of the F₀F₁-ATPase system.