{"doi":"10.1101/2023.01.18.524622","title":"Mechanistic Basis for Enhanced Strigolactone Sensitivity in KAI2 Triple Mutant","abstract":"Abstract Striga hermonthica is a parasitic weed that destroys billions of dollars’ worth of staple crops every year. Its rapid proliferation stems from an enhanced ability to me-tabolize strigolactones (SLs), plant hormones that direct root branching and shoot growth. Striga’s SL receptor, Sh HTL7, bears more similarity to the staple crop kar-rikin receptor KAI2 than to SL receptor D14, though KAI2 variants in plants like Arabidopsis thaliana show minimal SL sensitivity. Recently, studies have indicated that a small number of point mutations to HTL7 residues can confer SL sensitivity to At KAI2. Here, we analyze both wild-type At KAI2 and SL-sensitive mutant Var64 through all-atom, long-timescale molecular dynamics simulations to determine the ef-fects of these mutations on receptor function at a molecular level. We demonstrate that the mutations stabilize SL binding by about 2 kcal/mol. They also result in a doubling of the average pocket volume, and eliminate the dependence of binding on certain pocket conformational arrangements. While the probability of certain non-binding SL-receptor interactions increases in the mutant compared with the wild-type, the rate of binding also increases by a factor of ten. All these changes account for the increased SL sensitivity in mutant KAI2, and suggest mechanisms for increasing functionality of host crop SL receptors.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2023,"id":398214,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9555,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":683596,"name":"Jiming Chen","orcid":"0000-0001-5232-5382","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":986474,"name":"Tanner J. Dean","orcid":"0000-0002-3423-4177","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":625516,"name":"Diwakar Shukla","orcid":"0000-0003-4079-5381","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":832032,"name":"Briana L. Sobecks","orcid":"0000-0003-2086-8598","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":69,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:19:43.776284Z","pmid":"36712135","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}