Stability and folding kinetics of ribonuclease T1 are strongly altered by the replacement of cis-proline 39 with alanine.

The refolding of ribonuclease T1 involves two major slow processes that exhibit properties of prolyl isomerization reactions. A comparison of the wild-type protein and a designed variant where the cis Ser54-Pro55 bond was replaced by a Gly54-Asn55 bond indicated that the faster of these reactions is the isomerization of Pro55. Here we report the replacement of the other cis proline of ribonuclease T1 at position 39 by alanine. The Pro39Ala variant is similar to the wild-type protein in secondary and tertiary structure, and the enzymatic activity towards RNA and a dinucleotide substrate remains almost unchanged. The fluorescence emission of the single Trp59 is lowered by the Pro39Ala substitution, probably because Trp59 is in close contact to Pro39 in wild-type ribonuclease T1. Unlike the substitution of cis Pro55, the Pro39Ala mutation is strongly destabilizing and reduces the Gibbs free energy of the folded protein by about 20 kJ/mol. Pro39 is buried in native RNase T1 and located near the active site. The observed destabilization could originate from the presence of a cis alanyl bond in the Pro39Ala variant or from a local distortion caused by the incorporation of a trans alanyl peptide bond in the interior of the protein. In the refolding kinetics the replacement of Pro39 leads to a disappearance of the fast-refolding species. Refolding still involves two consecutive slow steps. The first and faster step could be the isomerization of the remaining cis Pro55. The second, very slow step is a novel reaction that appears to have no counterpart in the refolding of the wild-type protein. All mutant molecules must undergo this reaction before reaching the native state. These major changes in the folding kinetics strongly indicate that cis-Pro39 is indeed of major importance for the folding of the wild-type protein. They indicate, moreover, that some new feature of protein folding kinetics is observed in these studies of the Pro39Ala variant.