Forced-rupture of Cell-Adhesion Complexes Reveals abrupt switch between two Brittle States

Abstract

Cell adhesion complexes (CACs), which are activated by ligand binding, play key roles in many cellular functions ranging from cell cycle regulation to mediation of cell extracellular matrix adhesion.Inspired by single molecule pulling experiments using atomic force spectroscopy on leukocyte function-associated antigen-1 (LFA-1), expressed in T-cells, bound to intercellular adhesion molecules (ICAM), we performed constant loading rate (r f ) and constant force (F ) simulations using the Self-Organized Polymer (SOP) model to describe the mechanism of ligand rupture from CACs. The simulations reproduce the major experimental finding on the kinetics of the rupture process, namely, the dependence of the most probable rupture forces (f * s) on ln r f (r f is the loading rate) exhibits two distinct linear regimes. The first, at low r f , has a shallow slope whereas the the slope at high r f is much larger, especially for LFA-1/ICAM-1 complex with the transition between the two occurring over a narrow r f range. Locations of the two transition states (TSs), extracted from the simulations show an abrupt change from a high value at low r f or F to a low value at high r f or F . This unusual behavior in which the CACs switch from one brittle (TS position is a constant over a range of forces) state to another brittle state is not found in forced-rupture in other protein complexes. We explain this novel behavior by constructing the free energy profiles, F (Λ)s, as a function of a collective reaction coordinate (Λ), involving many key charged residues and a critical metal ion 2 peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/211045 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Oct. 29, 2017; (M g 2+ ). The TS positions in F(Λ), which quantitatively agree with the parameters extracted using the Bell-Evans model, change abruptly at a critical force, demonstrating that it, rather than the molecular extension is a good reaction coordinate. Our combined analyses using simulations performed in both the pulling modes (constant r f and force) reveal a new mechanism for the two loading regimes observed in the rupture kinetics in CACs.

Low force unfolding of a single-domain protein by parallel pathways

“…(iv) Rupture of protein complexes (biotin-streptavidin 16,22 ) involves overcoming two sequential barriers with two TS locations, one at low forces (large value of x ‡ ) and the other (small value of x ‡ ) at high forces. (v) In forced-rupture of certain cell adhesion complexes, it is possible to construct a collective one dimensional coordinate, 23 which reflects the change in the slopes observed in the [log r f , f * ] plots. These studies show that new physics of biological molecules and complexes could be teased out using the data from single molecule experiments complemented by theory and well-designed simulations.…”