Structural highlights
Publication Abstract from PubMedAberrant KRAS signaling is a driver of many cancers and yet remains an elusive target for drug therapy. The nuclease hypersensitive element of the KRAS promoter has been reported to form secondary DNA structures called G-quadruplexes (G4s) which may play important roles in regulating KRAS expression, and has spurred interest in structural elucidation studies of the KRAS G-quadruplexes. Here, we report the first high-resolution crystal structure (1.6 A) of a KRAS G-quadruplex as a 5'-head-to-head dimer with extensive poly-A pi-stacking interactions observed across the dimer. Molecular dynamics simulations confirmed that the poly-A pi-stacking interactions are also maintained in the G4 monomers. Docking and molecular dynamics simulations with two G4 ligands that display high stabilization of the KRAS G4 indicated the poly-A loop was a binding site for these ligands in addition to the 5'-G-tetrad. Given sequence and structural variability in the loop regions provide the opportunity for small-molecule targeting of specific G4s, we envisage this high-resolution crystal structure for the KRAS G-quadruplex will aid in the rational design of ligands to selectively target KRAS. High resolution crystal structure of a KRAS promoter G-quadruplex reveals a dimer with extensive poly-A pi-stacking interactions for small-molecule recognition.,Ou A, Schmidberger JW, Wilson KA, W Evans C, Hargreaves JA, Grigg M, O'Mara ML, Iyer KS, Bond CS, Smith NM Nucleic Acids Res. 2020 Apr 20. pii: 5822969. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkaa262. PMID:32313953[1] From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. References
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