Ginevra De Masi
Josephin Domain Conformational Dynamics explored by Coarse-Grained Molecular Modeling and Enhanced Sampling targeting novel Insight into the Onset and Evolution of Ataxia-3 Pathology  .
Rel. Marco Agostino Deriu, Marcello Miceli. Politecnico di Torino, Master of science program in Biomedical Engineering, 2023
Abstract
Ataxin-3 misfolding and aggregation process is responsible of a pathological condition known as Spinocerebellar Ataxia-3, a polyglutamine inherited neurodegenerative disease.The pathology is characterized by progressive challenges in movement and balance.This disorder is associated with mutations at the ATAXN3 gene, located to chromosome 14q32.1, that result in the expansion of the Polyglutamminic tail (PolyQ) in the encoded At-3 protein.Extensive research is conducted on protein aggregation pathway, although the underlying molecular mechanisms are not understood yet.In general variation in pH, temperature and interactions with specific properties substrates can influence protein misfolding. Previous studies demonstrate how At-3-N-terminal region called Josephin Domain(JD) has a leading role in At-3 fiber formation for its amyloidogenic propensity.Therefore, understanding the connection between JD structural characteristics and aggregation tendency could enhance the knowledge of the pathology and facilitate the development of a cure. Experimental techniques are not able to simultaneously achieve high resolution on spatial and temporal scales, being limited in their understanding of the dynamics at molecular scale.
On the other hand, computational molecular modelling has proven to be valuable in exploring protein molecular dynamics and mechanisms of action with atomistic resolution.In literature, studies succeeded to investigate the JD conformational dynamics by means of all atom(AA) MD simulations, however, the high computational cost limits the time scale investigation to hundreds of nanoseconds.The results obtained are a validation of the coarse-grained (CG) method which demonstrates to be able to illustrate the conformational dynamics of JD, affirming the capacity of coarse-grained MD in capturing biologically relevant conformations.In literature the CG approach has emerged has a modelling technique with a trade of between computational efficiency and the ability to capture essential molecular behaviours
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