Conformational Ensemble of Amyloid-Forming Semenogelin 1 Peptide SEM1(68–107) by NMR Spectroscopy and MD Simulations

SEM1(68-107) is a peptide corresponding to the region of semenogelin 1 protein from 68 to 107 amino acid position. SEM1(68-107) is an abundant component of semen, which participates in HIV infection enhanced by amyloid fibrils forming. To understand the causes influencing amyloid fibril formation, it is necessary to determine the spatial structure of SEM1(68-107). It was shown that the determination of SEM1(68-107) structure is complicated by the non-informative NMR spectra due to the high intramolecular mobility of peptides. The complementary approach based on the geometric restrictions of individual peptide fragments and molecular modeling was used for the determination of the spatial structure of SEM1(68-107). The N- (SEM1(68-85)) and C-terminuses (SEM1(86-107)) of SEM1(68-107) were chosen as two individual peptide fragments. SEM1(68-85) and SEM1(86-107) structures were established with NMR and circular dichroism CD spectroscopies. These regions were used as geometric restraints for the SEM1(68-107) structure modeling. Even though most of the SEM1(68-107) peptide is unstructured, our detailed analysis revealed the following structured elements: N-terminus (70His-84Gln) forms an α-helix, (86Asp-94Thr) and (101Gly-103Ser) regions fold into 310-helixes. The absence of a SEM1(68-107) rigid conformation leads to instability of these secondary structure regions. The calculated SEM1(68-107) structure is in good agreement with experimental values of hydrodynamic radius and dihedral angles obtained by NMR spectroscopy. This testifies the adequacy of a combined approach based on the use of peptide fragment structures for the molecular modeling formation of full-size peptide spatial structure.