Thermodynamic analysis of the partition process of small ligands into proteins and its concentration effects
partition coefficient, sevoflurane, kv1.2 , small molecules , albumin , trichloroethanol , allostery
Many biological processes are regulated by interactions with small ligands. As occupancy states and sites number grow, it becomes harder for nowadays available methods to characterize them. This problem can be solved by considering a new approach that molecule interaction is a partition to a phase that corresponds to the protein interface. In this work, the two-site approach is used for obtaining a partition coefficient from flooding simulations. From the partition coefficient, many properties in different concentrations can be reconstructed, e.g. titration curves and tridimensional ligand densities. Furthermore, the partition process is separated into steps from a thermodynamical cycle and each step and concentration influence are analyzed carefully. The results obtained were satisfactory close when compared to independent systems. The development of the tools in this work has a very promising application potential, being very useful to a myriad of small molecules interactions with proteins.