Mechanism of Coupled Folding and Binding in the siRNA-PAZ Complex

The PAZ domain plays a key role in gene silencing pathway. The PAZ domain binds with siRNAs to form the multimeric RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). RISC identifies mRNAs homologous to the siRNAs and promotes their degradation. It was found that binding with siRNA significantly enhances apo-PAZ folding. However, the mechanism by which folding is coupled to binding is poorly understood. Thus, the coupling relationship between binding and folding is very important for understanding the function of gene silencing. We have performed molecular dynamics (MD) of both bound and apo-PAZ to study the coupling mechanism between binding and folding in the siRNA-PAZ complex. Room-temperature MD simulations suggest that both PAZ and siRNA become more rigid and stable upon siRNA binding. Kinetic analysis of high-temperature MD simulations shows that both bound and apo-PAZ unfold via a two-state process. The unfolding pathways are different between bound and apo-PAZ: the order of helix III and helices I & II unfolding is switched. Furthermore, transition probability was used to determine the transition state ensemble for both bound and apo-PAZ. It was found that the transition state of bound PAZ is more compact than that of apo-PAZ. The predicted Φ-values suggest that the Φ-values of helix III and sheets of β3-β7 for bound PAZ are more native-like than those of apo-PAZ upon the binding of siRNA. The results can help us to understand the mechanism of gene silencing.