DeepCDpred: Inter-residue distance and contact prediction for improved prediction of protein structure.

Rapid, accurate prediction of protein structure from amino acid sequence would accelerate fields as diverse as drug discovery, synthetic biology and disease diagnosis. Massively improved prediction of protein structures has been driven by improving the prediction of the amino acid residues that contact in their 3D structure. For an average globular protein, around 92% of all residue pairs are non-contacting, therefore accurate prediction of only a small percentage of inter-amino acid distances could increase the number of constraints to guide structure determination. We have trained deep neural networks to predict inter-residue contacts and distances. Distances are predicted with an accuracy better than most contact prediction techniques. Addition of distance constraints improved de novo structure predictions for test sets of 158 protein structures, as compared to using the best contact prediction methods alone. Importantly, usage of distance predictions allows the selection of better models from the structure pool without a need for an external model assessment tool. The results also indicate how the accuracy of distance prediction methods might be improved further.

Protonation Kinetics Compromise Liposomal Fluorescence Assay of Membrane Permeation.

The membrane permeation of weak acids and bases couples to the ambient pH and can be studied using pH-sensitive dyes as reporters. Such fluorescence measurements with aliphatic amine drugs have revealed biexponential kinetics of permeation into liposomes (Eyer et al. J. Controlled Release 2014, 173, 102). Permeability coefficients have been obtained using the faster of the two kinetic components. Here, the origin of the biexponential kinetics is studied with a kinetic rate model that in addition to drug permeation accounts for the protonation of the drug and the dye. Surprisingly, the experimental readout is found to strongly depend on the rates of protonation. The analysis demonstrates that fluorescence studies of drug permeation relying on pH-sensitive proxies should be accompanied by comprehensive modeling of the relevant kinetic processes.

Lipid bilayer permeation of aliphatic amine and carboxylic acid drugs: rates of insertion, translocation and dissociation from MD simulations.

Aliphatic amines (AAs) and carboxylic acids (CAs) constitute the two most commonly occurring chemical groups among orally active drugs [Manallack, et al., ChemMedChem, 2013, 8, 242]. Here, we aim to rationalize this observation in terms of molecular properties that are essential for drug bioavailability. To this end, the permeation of the AA drug dyclonine and the CA drug 4-phenylbutyrate through a lipid bilayer is studied with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Permeability coefficients for the neutral and ionized forms of these drugs are calculated using the inhomogeneous solubility-diffusion model. To draw conclusions about other AA and CA drugs, the permeability coefficient is expressed as a sum over contributions from drug insertion into, translocation across, and dissociation from the lipid bilayer. Simple but general expressions for each of these separate steps are obtained and validated against the MD simulations of dyclonine and phenylbutyrate. We conclude that the neutral forms of most AA and CA drugs have large permeability coefficients (>1 cm s(-1)), while their ionized forms ensure solubility in aqueous environments. Thus, a physicochemical rationale for the reported abundance of AAs and CAs among drugs is provided.

Fabrication of 3D Controlled in vitro Microenvironments.

Microfluidics-based lab-on-a-chips have many advantages, one of which is to provide physiologically relevant settings for cell biology experiments. Thus there is an ever increasing interest in their fabrication. Our goal is to construct three dimensional (3D) Controlled in vitro Microenvironments (CivMs) that mimic the in vivo microenvironments. Here, we present our optimized fabrication method that works for various lab-on-a-chip designs with a wide range of dimensions. The most crucial points are:•While using one type of SU-8 photoresist (SU-2075), fine tuning of ramp, dwell time, spin speed, durations of soft bake, UV exposure and development allows fabrication of SU-8 masters with various heights from 40 to 600 µm.•Molding PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) at room temperature for at least two days instead of baking at higher temperatures prevents not only tears and bubbles in PDMS stamps but also cracks in the SU-8 master.•3D nature of the CivMs is ensured by keeping the devices inverted during gel polymerization.