Elucidating the Role of Wildtype and Variant FGFR2 Structural Dynamics in (Dys)Function and Disorder

The fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2) gene is one of the most extensively studied genes with many known mutations implicated in several human disorders, including oncogenic ones. Most FGFR2 disease-associated gene mutations are missense mutations that result in constitutive activation of the FGFR2 protein and downstream molecular pathways. Many tertiary structures of the FGFR2 kinase domain are publicly available in the wildtype and mutated forms and in the inactive and activated state of the receptor. The current literature suggests a molecular brake inhibiting the ATP-binding A loop from adopting the activated state. Mutations relieve this brake, triggering allosteric changes between active and inactive states. However, the existing analysis relies on static structures and fails to account for the intrinsic structural dynamics. In this study, we utilize experimentally resolved structures of the FGFR2 tyrosine kinase domain and machine learning to capture the intrinsic structural dynamics, correlate it with functional regions and disease types, and enrich it with predicted structures of variants with currently no experimentally resolved structures. Our findings demonstrate the value of machine learning-enabled characterizations of structure dynamics in revealing the impact of mutations on (dys)function and disorder in FGFR2.