P450cam - The Movie
How the substrate channel opens

Many P450s have been seen in a variety of open and closed states but it has never been understood how they move from one state to another.

This animation shows 21 different experimentally derived X-ray crystal structures of P450cam bound to different large tethered substrate analogs.

Each analog is bound in the channel (not shown) and they induce a variety of changes in the structure of he protein, from fully closed to fully open.

When these structures are displayed in order of their principal component displacement, the resulting animation suggests a “molecular dynamics” type trajectory to convert from the closed to open states.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .