Molecular Dynamics Study of Conformational Changes of Tankyrase 2 Binding Subsites upon Ligand Binding

The interactions between proteins and ligands are involved in various biological functions. While experimental structures provide key static structural information of ligand-unbound and ligand-bound proteins, dynamic information is often insufficient for understanding the detailed mechanism of protein-ligand binding. Here, we studied the conformational changes of the tankyrase 2 binding pocket upon ligand binding using molecular dynamics simulations of the ligand-unbound and ligand-bound proteins. The ligand-binding pocket has two subsites: the nicotinamide and adenosine subsite. Comparative analysis of these molecular dynamics trajectories revealed that the conformational change of the ligand-binding pocket was characterized by four distinct conformations of the ligand-binding pocket. Two of the four conformations were observed only in molecular dynamics simulations. We found that the pocket conformational change on ligand binding was based on the connection between the nicotinamide and adenosine subsites that are located adjacently in the pocket. From the analysis, we proposed the protein-ligand binding mechanism of tankyrase 2. Finally, we discussed the computational prediction of the ligand binding pose using the tankyrase 2 structures obtained from the molecular dynamics simulations.