Research section Research projects and references

Research: CANCER Folding Project #15303

Project #15303 overview

Project Summary AI Beta

Lanthipeptides are powerful natural chemicals that can fight diseases. ProcM is a special enzyme that makes them, but scientists don't know exactly how it chooses where to act. This project uses computer simulations to understand how ProcM works at the atomic level, hoping to unlock its secrets for creating new medicines.
Automated summary; simplified and may not be fully accurate.

Project team

Manager(s)
Miko Miwa
Institution
UIUC

Work unit

Atoms
158,000
Core
0x27
Status
Public
Source material

Official Project Description

Lanthipeptides are a class of ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) produced from precursor peptides through dehydration and cyclization reactions.

They exhibit a broad range of bioactivities, including anticancer, antimicrobial, antiviral, and antiallodynic effects.

ProcM, a class II lanthipeptide synthetase, is notable for its high substrate tolerance.

Remarkably, this single enzyme can catalyze the cyclization of a diverse array of substrates with high fidelity—an ability that has been extensively leveraged in the bioengineering of novel lanthipeptides.

Despite this, the molecular mechanism by which ProcM determines the site-selectivity of its substrates remains unclear.

In this study, we aim to perform atomic-level molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the wild-type (WT) and Variant ProcM–ProcA3.3 complexes to investigate the basis of ProcM's site-selectivity.