Normal coordinate structural decomposition of the heme distortions of hemoglobin in various quaternary states and bound to allosteric effectors

The distortions of the alpha1, alpha2, beta1, and beta2 hemes of human hemoglobin (HbA) in various quaternary states and as affected by the presence of allosteric effectors was investigated by subjecting CHARMM energy-minimized models to normal coordinate structural decomposition (NSD) analysis. NSD was applied to the individual hemes extracted from the R, T, and R2-state models of HbA and to HbA bound to DPG and to IHP. Overall, NSD results are indicative of characteristic distortions, not only for the hemes of the different HbA quaternary states, but also for the hemes of the HbA models bound to allosteric effectors. Comparing the distortions of the inequivalent alpha and beta hemes in T-state HbA, we show good correlation between NSD and the experimentally observed low-frequency nu52 (Eg) and gamma7 (A2u) modes reported in the literature for alpha and beta HbA hemes while noting substantial differences between these types for B2u and B1u distortions. For the R2 hemes, NSD yields heme distortions that are more comparable to those of the R-state, especially in magnitude. However, the R2 hemes do not exhibit inequivalence of alpha and beta heme distortions, a result that may contribute to an understanding of the functional importance of this state. Relative to T-state heme distortions, NSD results on the effector-bound hemes show that tertiary changes induced in T-state HbA as a result of binding DPG and IHP drastically affect heme distortions. In the alpha hemes extracted from the HbA-DPG model, most noteworthy are the increased wav(x) and wav(y) distortions and enhancement of ruf and dom deformations. In the beta hemes, the wav(y) is the most affected distortion with increase in sad. The NSD results are also different for the hemes of the HbA-IHP model, in that the beta sad and ruf deformations are more enhanced with increase of doming in the alpha hemes. Our results describe the effect of the subtle protein-induced changes on the nonplanarity of the HbA hemes that may play a role in the regulation of their oxygen affinity.