Unraveling the structural and molecular properties of 34-residue levans with various branching degrees by replica exchange molecular dynamics simulations

Levan has various potential applications in the pharmaceutical and food industries, such as cholesterol-lowering agents and prebiotics, due to its beneficial properties, which depend on its length and branching degree. A previous study also found that the branching degree of levan affected anti-tumor activities against SNU-1 and HepG2 tumor cell lines. Despite its promising potential, the properties of levans with different branching degrees are not well understood at the molecular level. In two models of the generalized Born implicit solvent (GB(HCT) and GB(OBC1)), we employed replica-exchange molecular dynamics simulations to explore conformational spaces of 34-residue levans (L(34)) with branching degrees of zero (LFO(34B0)), one (LFO(34B1)), three (LFO(34B3)) and five (LFO(34B5)), as well as to elucidate their structural and molecular properties. To ensure a fair comparison of the effects of branching degree on these properties, we focused on analyzing the properties of the central 21-residue of the main chains of all systems. Our results show that all major representative conformations tend to form helix-like structures with kinks, where two-kink helix-like structures have the highest population. As branching degree increases, the population of helix-like structures with zero or one kink tends to increase slightly. As the number of kinks in the structures with the same branching degree increases, the average values of the lengths and angles among centers of masses of three consecutive turns of residue i, i+3, and i+6 tended to decrease. Due to its highest occurring frequencies, the O6 ((i))—H3O ((i+1)) hydrogen bond could be important for helix-like structure formation. Moreover, hydrogen bonds forming among the branching residue (br), branching position (bp) and other residues of L(34B1), L(34B3) and L(34B5) were identified. The O1((bp))—H3O((br)), O1((br))—H3O((br)) and O5((br))—H1O((br)) hydrogen bonds were found in the first-, second- and third-highest occurrence frequencies, respectively. Our study provides novel and important insights into conformational spaces and the structural and molecular properties of 34-residue levans with various branching degrees, which tend to form helix-like structures with kinks.