Bacterial chemoreceptors provide an important model for understanding signalling processes. In the serine receptor Tsr from E. coli, a binding event in the periplasmic domain of the receptor dimer causes a shift in a single transmembrane helix of roughly 0.15 nm towards the cytoplasm. This small change is propagated through the ≈ 22 nm length of the receptor, causing downstream inhibition of the kinase CheA. This requires interactions within a trimer of receptor dimers. Additionally, the signal is amplified across a 53,000 nm(2) array of chemoreceptor proteins, including ≈ 5,200 receptor trimers-of-dimers, at the cell pole. Despite a wealth of experimental data on the system, including high resolution structures of individual domains and extensive mutagenesis data, it remains uncertain how information is communicated across the receptor from the binding event to the downstream effectors. We present a molecular model of the entire Tsr dimer, and examine its behaviour using coarse-grained molecular dynamics and elastic network modelling. We observe a large bending in dimer models between the linker domain HAMP and coiled-coil domains, which is supported by experimental data. Models of the trimer of dimers, built from the dimer models, are more constrained and likely represent the signalling state. Simulations of the models in a 70 nm diameter vesicle with a biologically realistic lipid mixture reveal specific lipid interactions and oligomerisation of the trimer of dimers. The results indicate a mechanism whereby small motions of a single helix can be amplified through HAMP domain packing, to initiate large changes in the whole receptor structure.

Transmembrane α-helices play a key role in many receptors, transmitting a signal from one side to the other of the lipid bilayer membrane. Bacterial chemoreceptors are one of the best studied such systems, with a wealth of biophysical and mutational data indicating a key role for the TM2 helix in signalling. In particular, aromatic (Trp and Tyr) and basic (Arg) residues help to lock α-helices into a membrane. Mutants in TM2 of E. coli Tar and related chemoreceptors involving these residues implicate changes in helix location and/or orientation in signalling. We have investigated the detailed structural basis of this via high throughput coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CG-MD) of Tar TM2 and its mutants in lipid bilayers. We focus on the position (shift) and orientation (tilt, rotation) of TM2 relative to the bilayer and how these are perturbed in mutants relative to the wildtype. The simulations reveal a clear correlation between small (ca. 1.5 Å) shift in position of TM2 along the bilayer normal and downstream changes in signalling activity. Weaker correlations are seen with helix tilt, and little/none between signalling and helix twist. This analysis of relatively subtle changes was only possible because the high throughput simulation method allowed us to run large (n = 100) ensembles for substantial numbers of different helix sequences, amounting to ca. 2000 simulations in total. Overall, this analysis supports a swinging-piston model of transmembrane signalling by Tar and related chemoreceptors.