Ation, or at the least a pointer towards how this needs to be carried out. Authors’ response: We are delighted to see that Reviewer appreciated the scale from the dilemma that the object of this study has set for theoretical calculations. We thank the reviewer for his quite beneficial comments. We agreed and have taken into account all of them using the single exception of your 1 that had been marked as an error by the Reviewer. We still think that we’ve utilised a right criterion for the salt bridges in our analysis. Figure 1a and b, the necessity of which has been questioned by the Reviewer within the comment (34), show how our final model fits inside the EM density. In the revised manuscript we supply some hints on how the functional consequences from our model could beShalaeva et al. Biology Direct (2015) 10:Page 26 ofvalidated by mutating the acidic residues of Apaf-1. Not surprisingly, we hope to see a well-resolved crystal and or cryo-EM structure of the cytochrome cApaf-1 complicated in the close to future.Extra filesAdditional file 1: Figures S1 and S2. Figure S1. Backbone coordinates RMSD heat maps for WD domains of Apaf-1 in complex with cytochrome c through MD simulation. Figure S2. Conservation of negatively charged residues within the WD domains of Apaf-1 homologs. Added file two: The PatchDock’ model structure just after power minimization. This really is the structure obtained immediately after manual editing of PatchDock-predicted model and energy minimization. The PatchDock’ model shows the most variety of salt bridges involving functionally relevant cytochrome c residues and remained stable in the course of molecular dynamics simulations. Added file 3: Original EM-fitted model structure [PDB:3J2T] [25] just after energy minimization. Further file 4: The ClusPro-predicted model structure after energy minimization. Added file 5: The PatchDock-predicted model structure following energy minimization. Additional file six: The Propylenedicarboxylic acid Epigenetics initial ZDOCK-predicted model structure just after power minimization. Additional file 7: The second ZDOCK-predicted model structure right after power minimization. Abbreviations Apaf-1: Apoptotic protease activating element 1; CARD: Caspase activation and recruitment domain; Cryo-EM: Cryo-electron microscopy; Etc.: Electron-transfer chain; MD: Molecular dynamics; NBD: Nucleotide-binding domain; ROS: Reactive oxygen species. Competing interests The authors declare that they’ve no competing interests. Authors’ contributions DNS performed molecular modeling and MD simulations, analyzed the information, at the same time as wrote the initial draft of your manuscript, DVD performed the sequence evaluation of cytochrome c, MYG performed the sequence Nalfurafine medchemexpress analysis of Apaf-1 and contributed towards the writing the manuscript, AYM developed the study, interpreted the data, and wrote the final version with the manuscript. All authors study, edited and approved the final manuscript. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to Prof. V.P. Skulachev for drawing their consideration for the potential key part of your residues of Apaf-1 within the formation of an apoptosome. The study of the authors was supported in part by the Osnabrueck University, Germany as well as a fellowship in the German Academic Exchange Service (DNS), grants from the Russian Science Foundation (1440592, AYM, molecular modeling of apoptosome formation, and 1400029, DVD, AYM, phylogenomic evaluation of cytochrome c), by the Development System from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia (access for the supercomputer facility), and by the Intramural Investigation System of t.