Structural Events in a Bacterial Uniporter Leading to Translocation of Glucose to the Cytosol.

Among classes of sugar transporters, there exists a comparatively new family of transporters named SWEET transporters (semi-SWEETS in bacteria) that are uniport transmembrane proteins. It is hypothesized that sugar is transported from the extracellular side (via outward-open state) to intracellular side (inward-open state) through intermediate occluded state (both extracellular and intracellular gates closed). In our study, extensive unbiased all-atom molecular dynamics simulations were carried out with the outward-open and inward-open conformations to study this transition mechanism. We find that after 100 ns, the outward-open structure without sugar bound starts changing to the occluded form leading to closure of extracellular gates stabilized by electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions. Further simulations (up to 7 μs) have led to a transition toward the inward-open form and suggest that there exists more than one intermediate occluded conformation. We have also performed 5-μs simulations on the glucose-docked structure to identify the putative substrate-bound translocation pathway. Glucose binds to semi-SWEET with strong hydrogen bonds to Asn66 and Trp50. Comparative simulations of substrate bound, and unbound forms suggested that glucose, the putative substrate, facilitates relatively rapid conformational transitions. For the first time, we captured the release of glucose to the cytosol, in this family of transporters. We find that prior to release of glucose, the glucose forms interactions with polar residues near the intracellular gate which may facilitate its release. The distance between the residues Asn31 and Gly34 of the other protomer was found to play a decisive role in the transport of glucose to the cytoplasmic side.