Automated and optimally FRET-assisted structural modeling
Mykola Dimura, Thomas-Otavio Peulen, Hugo Sanabria, Dmitro Rodnin, Katherina Hemmen, Christian A. Hanke, Claus A. M. Seidel, Holger Gohlke
Abstract
Abstract FRET experiments can provide state-specific structural information of complex dynamic biomolecular assemblies. However, to overcome the sparsity of FRET experiments, they need to be combined with computer simulations. We introduce a program suite with ( i ) an automated design tool for FRET experiments, which determines how many and which FRET pairs should be used to minimize the uncertainty and maximize the accuracy of an integrative structure, ( ii ) an efficient approach for FRET-assisted coarse-grained structural modeling, and all-atom molecular dynamics simulations-based refinement, and ( iii ) a quantitative quality estimate for judging the accuracy of FRET-derived structures as opposed to precision. We benchmark our tools against simulated and experimental data of proteins with multiple conformational states and demonstrate an accuracy of ~3 Å RMSD Cα against X-ray structures for sets of 15 to 23 FRET pairs. Free and open-source software for the introduced workflow is available at https://github.com/Fluorescence-Tools . A web server for FRET-assisted structural modeling of proteins is available at http://nmsim.de .