Electrostatic Impact of Brefeldin A on Thiocyanate Probes Surrounding the Interface of Arf1-BFA-ARNO4M, a Protein-Drug-Protein Complex.

Abstract

Protein-protein interactions regulate many cellular processes, making them ideal drug candidates. Design of such drugs, however, is hindered by a lack of understanding of the factors that contribute to the interaction specificity. Specific protein-protein complexes possess both structural and electrostatic complementarity, and while structural complementarity of protein complexes has been extensively investigated, fundamental understanding of the complicated networks of electrostatic interactions at these interfaces is lacking, thus hindering the rational design of orthosterically binding small molecules. To better understand the electrostatic interactions at protein interfaces and how a small molecule could contribute to and fit within that environment, we used a model protein-drug-protein system, Arf1-BFA-ARNO4M, to investigate how small molecule brefeldin A (BFA) perturbs the Arf1-ARNO4M interface. By using nitrile probe labeled Arf1 sites and measuring vibrational Stark effects as well as temperature dependent infrared shifts, we measured changes in the electric field and hydrogen bonding at this interface upon BFA binding. At all five probe locations of Arf1, we found that the vibrational shifts resulting from BFA binding corroborate trends found in Poisson-Boltzmann calculations of surface potentials of Arf1-ARNO4M and Arf1-BFA-ARNO4M, where BFA contributes negative electrostatic potential to the protein interface. The data also corroborate previous hypotheses about the mechanism of interfacial binding and confirm that alternating patches of hydrophobic and polar interactions lead to BFA binding specificity. These findings demonstrate the impact of BFA on this protein-protein interface and have implications for the design of other interfacial drug candidates.