Antigen Binding Reshapes Antibody Energy Landscape and Conformation Dynamics

This study elucidates the conformation dynamics of the free and antigen-bound antibody. Previous work has verified that antigen binding allosterically promotes Fc receptor recognition. Analysis of extensive molecular dynamics simulations finds that the energy landscape may play a decisive role in coordinating conformation changes but does not provide connections between the various conformational states. Here we provide such a connection. To obtain a detailed understanding of the impact of antigen binding on antibody conformation dynamics, this study utilizes Markov State Models to summarize the conformation dynamics probed in silico. We additionally equip these models with the ability to directly exploit the energy landscape view of dynamics via a computational method that detects energy basins and so allows utilizing detected basins as macrostates for the Markov State Model. Our study reveals many interesting findings and suggests that the antigen-bound form with high energy may provide many dynamic processes to further enhance co-factor binding of the antibody in the next step.