Pecher Pascal, Arnold Ulrich
Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Germany.
Biophys Chem. 2009 Apr;141(1):21-8. doi: 10.1016/j.bpc.2008.12.005. Epub 2008 Dec 30.
The significant contribution of disulfide bonds to the conformational stability of proteins is generally considered to result from an entropic destabilization of the unfolded state causing a faster escape of the molecules to the native state. However, the introduction of extra disulfide bonds into proteins as a general approach to protein stabilization yields rather inconsistent results. By modeling studies, we selected positions to introduce additional disulfide bonds into ribonuclease A at regions that had proven to be crucial for the initiation of the folding or unfolding process, respectively. However, only two out of the six variants proved to be more stable than unmodified ribonuclease A. The comparison of the thermodynamic and kinetic data disclosed a more pronounced effect on the unfolding reaction for all variants regardless of the position of the extra disulfide bond. Native-state proteolysis indicated a perturbation of the native state of the destabilized variants that obviously counterbalances the stability gain by the extra disulfide bond.
一般认为,二硫键对蛋白质构象稳定性的显著贡献源于未折叠状态的熵不稳定,导致分子更快地逃逸到天然状态。然而,将额外的二硫键引入蛋白质作为一种普遍的蛋白质稳定化方法,其结果却相当不一致。通过模型研究,我们分别在已被证明对折叠或展开过程的起始至关重要的区域选择位置,将额外的二硫键引入核糖核酸酶A。然而,六个变体中只有两个被证明比未修饰的核糖核酸酶A更稳定。热力学和动力学数据的比较表明,无论额外二硫键的位置如何,所有变体对展开反应的影响都更为显著。天然状态下的蛋白酶解表明,不稳定变体的天然状态受到扰动,这显然抵消了额外二硫键带来的稳定性增加。