Hydration of thermally denatured lysozyme studied by sorption calorimetry and differential scanning calorimetry.

We have studied hydration (and dehydration) of thermally denatured hen egg lysozyme using sorption calorimetry. Two different procedures of thermal denaturation of lysozyme were used. In the first procedure the protein was denatured in an aqueous solution at 90 degrees C, in the other procedure a sample that contained 20% of water was denatured at 150 degrees C. The protein denatured at 90 degrees C showed very similar sorption behavior to that of the native protein. The lysozyme samples denatured at 150 degrees C were studied at several temperatures in the range of 25-60 degrees C. In the beginning of sorption, the sorption isotherms of native and denatured lysozyme are almost identical. At higher water contents, however, the denatured lysozyme can absorb a greater amount of water than the native protein due to the larger number of available sorption sites. Desorption experiments did not reveal a pronounced hysteresis in the sorption isotherm of denatured lysozyme (such hysteresis is typical for native lysozyme). Despite the unfolded structure, the denatured lysozyme binds less water than does the native lysozyme in the desorption experiments at water contents up to 34 wt %. Glass transitions in the denatured lysozyme were observed using both differential scanning calorimetry and sorption calorimetry. Partial molar enthalpy of mixing of water in the glassy state is strongly exothermic, which gives rise to a positive temperature dependence of the water activity. The changes of the free energy of the protein induced by the hydration stabilize the denatured form of lysozyme with respect to the native form.