Probing the Molecular Basis of Aminoacyl‐Adenylate Affinity With <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> Leucyl‐<scp>tRNA</scp> Synthetase Employing Molecular Dynamics, Umbrella Sampling Simulations and Site‐Directed Mutagenesis

Leucyl-tRNA synthetase (LeuRS) is clinically validated molecular target for antibiotic development. Recently, we have reported several classes of small-molecular inhibitors targeting aminoacyl-adenylate binding site of Mycobacterium tuberculosis LeuRS with antibacterial activity. In this work, we performed in silico site-directed mutagenesis of M. tuberculosis LeuRS synthetic site in order to identify the most critical amino acid residues for the interaction with substrate and prove binding modes of inhibitors. We carried out 20-ns molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and used umbrella sampling (US) method for the calculation of the binding free energy (ΔGb) of leucyl-adenylate with wild-type and mutated forms of LeuRS. According to molecular modeling results, it was found that His89, Tyr93, and Glu660 are essential amino acid residues both for aminoacyl-adenylate affinity and hydrogen bond formation. We have selected His89 for experimental site-directed mutagenesis since according to our previous molecular docking results this amino acid residue was predicted to be important for inhibitor interaction in adenine-binding region. We obtained recombinant mutant M. tuberculosis LeuRS H89A. Using aminoacylation assay we have found that the mutation of His89 to Ala in the active site of M. tuberculosis LeuRS results in significant decrease of inhibitory activity for compounds belonging to three different chemical classes-3-phenyl-5-(1-phenyl-1H-[1,2,3]triazol-4-yl)-[1,2,4]oxadiazoles, N-benzylidene-N'-thiazol-2-yl-hydrazines, and 1-oxo-1H-isothiochromene-3-carboxylic acid (4-phenyl-thiazol-2-yl)-amide derivatives. Therefore, the interaction with His89 should be taken into account during further M. tuberculosis LeuRS inhibitors development and optimization.