The molecular recognition mechanism for superoxide dismutase presequence binding to the mitochondrial protein import receptor Tom20 from Oryza sativa involves an LRTLA motif.

Most mitochondrial proteins are synthesized in the cytosol as precursor and imported into the mitochondria by Tom complexes (translocase of outer membrane complexes). Knowledge of the binding mechanism between precursor and Tom20 in plants is very limited. Here, computational methods are employed to improve our understanding of the interactions between both molecules. To this end, we model mitochondrial superoxide dismutase precursor (pSOD) in complex with Tom20 in Oryza sativa (OsTom20). In a first stage, five main binding modes were generated using clustering analysis, energy minimization, and expert knowledge. In a second stage, the quality and validity of the resulting complexes is assessed by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with a generalized Born solvation model. The change in binding free energies is estimated using a computational alanine scanning technique. We identified a particularly favorable complex between pSOD and OsTom20, exhibiting the lowest binding free energy among all candidates and correlating well with experimental data. Furthermore, three independent explicit solvent MD simulations of this structure, each of 100 ns duration, reveal that hydrophobic interactions occur between pSOD and OsTom20, in particular between L158 of pSOD and W81 of OsTom20, as evidenced by analysis of intermolecular distances and corresponding relative free energy landscapes. L158 is part of an interacting LRTLA motif. These results provide new insight into the structural basis and dynamics of precursor recognition by Tom20 in plant, and their generality is supported by sequence alignments with seven other plants.