Exploring the drug resistance of V32I and M46L mutant HIV-1 protease to inhibitor TMC114: Flap dynamics and binding mechanism

• Provide theoretical evidence for the binding of TMC114 on the flap region of the HIV-1-pr mutants (M46L and V32I).
• Interpret drug resistance mechanism for the mutants M46L and V32I in spite of the second binding of TMC114 on the flap region.
• Compare the effect on the flap dynamics and binding affinity for the sole binding and two site binding of TMC114.

Inhibitors of HIV-1 protease (HIV-1-pr) generally only bind to the active site of the protease. However, for some mutants such as V32I and M46L the TMC114 can bind not only to the active cavity but also to the groove of the flexible flaps. Although the second binding site suggests the higher efficiency of the drug against HIV-1-pr, the drug resistance in HIV-1-pr due to mutations cannot be ignored, which prompts us to investigate the molecular mechanisms of drug resistance and behavior of double bound TMC114 (2T) to HIV-1-pr. The conformational dynamics of HIV-1-pr and the binding of TMC114 to the WT, V32I and M46L mutants were investigated with all-atom molecular dynamic (MD) simulation. The 20 ns MD simulation shows many fascinating effects of the inhibitor binding to the WT and mutant proteases. MM-PBSA calculations explain the binding free energies unfavorable for the M46L and V32I mutants as compared to the WT. For the single binding (1T) the less binding affinity can be attributed to the entropic loss for both V32I-1T and M46L-1T. Although the second binding of TMC114 with flap does increase binding energy for the mutants (V32I-2T and M46L-2T), the considerable entropy loss results in the lower binding Gibbs free energies. Thus, binding of TMC114 in the flap region does not help much in the total gain in binding affinity of the system, which was verified from this study and thereby validating experiments.

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