The Arabidopsis AtSWEET13 transporter discriminates sugars by selective facial and positional substrate recognition.

ABSTRACT: Transporters are targeted by endogenous metabolites and exogenous molecules to reach cellular destinations, but it is generally not understood how different substrate classes exploit the same transporter's mechanism. Any disclosure of plasticity in transporter mechanism when treated with different substrates becomes critical for developing general selectivity principles in membrane transport catalysis. Using extensive molecular dynamics simulations with an enhanced sampling approach, we select the Arabidopsis sugar transporter AtSWEET13 as a model system to identify the basis for glucose versus sucrose molecular recognition and transport. Here we find that AtSWEET13 chemical selectivity originates from a conserved substrate facial selectivity demonstrated when committing alternate access,

SUBMITTER: Weigle AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11196581 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature