Molecular Dynamics Decomposition of Temperature-Dependent Elastic Neutron Scattering by a Protein Solution

AbstractMolecular dynamics simulations are performed of bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor in a cryosolution over a range of temperatures from 80 to 300K and the origins identified of elastic dynamic neutron scattering from the solution. The elastic scattering and mean-square displacement calculated from the molecular dynamics trajectories are in reasonable agreement with experiments on a larger protein in the same solvent. The solvent and protein contributions to the scattering from the simulation model are determined. At lower temperatures (<∼200K) or on shorter timescales (∼10ps) the scattering contributions are proportional to the isotopic nuclear scattering cross-sections of each component. However, for T>200K marked deviations from these cross-sections are seen due to differences in the dynamics of the components of the solution. Rapid activation of solvent diffusion leads to the variation with temperature of the total elastic intensity being determined largely by that of the solvent. At higher temperatures (>240K) and longer times (∼100ps) the protein makes the only significant contribution to the scattering, the solvent scattering having moved out of the accessible time-space window. Decomposition of the protein mean-square displacement shows that the observed dynamical transition in the solution at 200–220K involves activation of both internal motions and external whole-molecule rotational and translational diffusion. The proportion that the external dynamics contributes to the protein mean-square displacement increases to ∼30 and 60% at 300K on the 10- and 100-ps timescales, respectively