PNNL

Abstract

Protein kinases catalyze the transfer of the ?-phosphoryl group from ATP, a key regulatory process governing signalling pathways in eukaryotic cells. The structure of the active site in these enzymes is highly conserved implying common catalytic mechanism. In this work we investigate the reaction process in cAPK protein kinase (PKA) using a combined quantum mechanics and molecular mechanics approach. The novel computational features of our work include reaction pathway determination with nudged elastic band methodology and calculation of free energy profiles of the reaction process taking into account finite temperature fluctuations of the protein environment. We find that the transfer of the ?-phosphoryl group in the protein environment is an exothermic reaction with the reaction barrier of 15 kcal/mol.