Estudos in silico da enzima EPSP sintase de Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract

Biomolecular recognition processes are intrinsically related to protein flexibility. To understand how ligands interact with its partners, how proteins can cooperate with each other, or why aggregation process occurs, are particularly important, not only to biophysics, but also in the rational drug design process. X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, and molecular dynamics simulations are broadcasted approaches used to try to comprehend flexibility in biological macromolecules, although, this is not an easy task. This Ph.D. thesis will discuss the role of the flexibility using two different systems, (i) Mycobacterium tuberculosis EPSP synthase and (ii) Calmodulin from Mus musculus. Our main goal with this first system was to analyse in detail the structural information of the EPSP synthase, using molecular dynamics simulation. As a result, we have hypothesised how EPSP synthase flexibility could affect its activity, as well as its implications in the process of molecular docking experiments. Calmodulin project was developed during a ten month internship at the University of Cambridge. Our main goal was to study the influence of peptide mutated sequences in the process of molecular recognition, using nuclear magnetic resonance and isothermal titration calorimetry. As a product of this work, we have observed the impact of the linker domain to the peptide recognition, as well as, we have presented the importance of the entropy‐ enthalpy balance in the association with Calmodulin.