Abstract
When two or more amino acid mutations occur in protein systems, they can
interact in a non-additive fashion termed epistasis. One way to quantify
epistasis between mutation pairs in protein systems is by using free
energy differences: 系 = 饾毇饾毇G1,2 - (饾毇饾毇G1 + 饾毇饾毇G2) where 饾毇饾毇G refers to the change in
the Gibbs free energy, subscripts 1 and 2 refer to single mutations in
arbitrary order and 1,2 refers to the double mutant. In this study, we
explore possible biophysical mechanisms that drive pairwise epistasis in
both protein-protein binding affinity and protein folding stability.
Using the largest available datasets containing experimental protein
structures and free energy data, we derived statistical models for both
binding and folding epistasis (系) with similar explanatory power (R2) of
0.299 and 0.258, respectively. These models contain terms and
interactions that are consistent with intuition. For example, increasing
the Cartesian separation between mutation sites leads to a decrease in
observed epistasis for both folding and binding. Our results provide
insight into factors that contribute to pairwise epistasis in protein
systems and their importance in explaining epistasis. However, the low
explanatory power indicates that more study is needed to fully
understand this phenomenon.