Computational Methods
The native structure of Vpr13-33 with sequence of EPYNEWTLELLEELKSEAVRH was download from Protein
Data Bank (PDB code: 1FI0) and modeled by the AMBER03 force field27. The peptide was capped by acetyl and amine groups to avoid a possible salt bridge formed between the termini. GO were constructed based on a molecular formula of C10O1(OH)1(COOH)0.5 (i.e., 2 epoxy, 2 hydroxyl on both sides of graphene basal plane, and
1 carboxyl group on the edges of graphene, per 20 carbon atoms), which reflects a typical outcome of a standard oxidation process28,29. The hydroxyl and epoxy groups were randomly attached to both sides of the basal plane, and the carboxyl groups were also attached to the carbon atoms on the edge randomly. The unoxidized carbon atoms in GO were treated as uncharged Lennard-Jones (LJ) balls with a cross section of σcc = 3.4 Å and a depth of the potential well of εcc = 0.086 kcal/mol, and were restrained by a harmonic potential with a spring constant
2.4 kcal mol−1 Å−2 during the simulation30. The bonded parameters of carbon atoms in graphene were taken from Patra et al.31. The parameters of hydroxyl, carboxyl and epoxy groups were taken from the AMBER03 force field for serine, glutamic acid and dialkyl ether, respectively.
All MD simulations were performed by using the Gromacs package 4.5.5 with periodic boundary condi- tions in all directions32,33. The particle-mesh Ewald method was used to calculate the long-range electrostatic interactions, whereas the vdW interactions were treated with smooth cutoff at a distance of 12 Å34,35. Water was represented by the TIP3P model36. After energy minimization, the solvated systems were pre-equilibrated by MD simulations for 500 ps at a constant pressure of 1 bar and a temperature of 298 K with Berendsen coupling meth- ods37. Then, the center of mass (COM) of Vpr13-33 was released, and the production simulation continued to be performed in an NVT ensemble at 298 K for 500 ns. Data were collected every 1 ps.
The binding energy of Vpr13-33 on GO was computed from the potential of mean force (PMF) using umbrella sampling. First, we conducted steered MD simulation to pull Vpr13-33 far away from GO, which was fixed during the simulation, and then 30 configurations were generated along the z-axis direction (reaction coordinate). The z coordinates of COM distance between Vpr13-33 and GO in each configuration differed by 0.1 nm. Each window was equilibrated for 5 ns and a production run of 5 ns was continued for sampling. Eventually, the PMF profile was obtained by the Weighted Histogram Analysis Method (WHAM), implemented in the GROMACS package as ‘g_wham’38.