Department of Chemistry, Umeå University, 90187 Umeå, Sweden.
Department of Chemistry, Umeå University, 90187 Umeå, Sweden.
FEBS Lett. 2014 Mar 3;588(5):811-4. doi: 10.1016/j.febslet.2014.01.043. Epub 2014 Jan 31.
To understand protein biophysics in crowded cellular environments, researchers often use synthetic polymers as 'crowding agents' in vitro. The idea is that these agents will occupy space and reproduce the in vivo scenario in terms of excluded volume. However, recent work has challenged this concept and pointed out that attractive interactions between protein and crowding agent will provide an enthalpic contribution to the overall effect on protein thermodynamics. Here we use a typical synthetic crowding agent and a well-studied model protein to demonstrate in a window of 50K that the presence of dextran 20 affects apoazurin by steric repulsion.
为了在拥挤的细胞环境中理解蛋白质生物物理学，研究人员通常在体外使用合成聚合物作为“拥挤剂”。其理念是，这些试剂将占据空间，并在排除体积方面再现体内情况。然而，最近的工作对这一概念提出了挑战，并指出蛋白质与拥挤剂之间的吸引力相互作用将对蛋白质热力学产生焓贡献。在这里，我们使用典型的合成拥挤剂和一种经过充分研究的模型蛋白，在 50K 的窗口内证明了葡聚糖 20 的存在通过空间排斥作用影响脱辅基细胞色素 c。
