Enzymes in a human cytoplasm model organize into submetabolon complexes

Enzyme–enzyme interactions are fundamental to the function of cells. Their atomistic mechanisms remain elusive mainly due to limitations of in-cell measurements. We address this challenge by atomistically modeling, for a total of ≈80 μs, a slice of the human cell cytoplasm that includes three successive enzymes along the glycolytic pathway: glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK), and phosphoglycerate mutase (PGM). We tested the model for nonspecific protein stickiness, an artifact of current atomistic force fields in crowded environments. The simulations reveal that the human enzymes co-organize in-cell into transient submetabolon complexes, consistent with previous experimental results. Our data both reiterate known specificity between GAPDH and PGK and reveal extensive direct interactions between GAPDH and PGM. Our simulations further reveal, through force field benchmarking, the critical role of protein solvation in facilitating these enzyme–enzyme interactions. Transient interenzyme interactions with μs lifetime occur repeatedly in our simulations via specific sticky protein surface patches, with interactions often mediated by charged patch residues. Some of the residues that interact frequently with one another lie in or near the active site of the enzymes. We show that some of these patches correspond to a general mode to interact with several partners for promiscuous enzymes like GAPDH. We further show that the non-native yeast PGK is stickier than human PGK in our human cytoplasm model, supporting the idea of evolutionary pressure to reduce sticking. Our cytoplasm modeling paves the way toward capturing the atomistic dynamics of an entire enzymatic pathway in-cell.