Sola-Penna M, Meyer-Fernandes J R
Departamento de Fármacos, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 21944-910, Brasil.
Arch Biochem Biophys. 1998 Dec 1;360(1):10-4. doi: 10.1006/abbi.1998.0906.
Trehalose has been described to act as the best stabilizer of structure and function of several macromolecules. Although other sugars also stabilize macromolecules, none of them are as effective as trehalose. The extraordinary effect of trehalose has been attributed to several of its properties such as making hydrogen bonds with membranes or the ability to modify the solvation layer of proteins. However, the explanations always result in a question: Why is trehalose more effective than other sugars? Here, we show that trehalose has a larger hydrated volume than other related sugars. According to our results, trehalose occupies at least 2.5 times larger volume than sucrose, maltose, glucose, and fructose. We correlate this property with the ability to protect the structure and function of enzymes against thermal inactivation. When the concentrations of all sugars were corrected by the percentage of the occupied volume, they presented the same effectiveness. Our results suggest that because of this larger hydrated volume, trehalose can substitute more water molecules in the solution, and this property is very close to its effectiveness. Finally, these data drive us to conclude that the higher size exclusion effect is responsible for the difference in efficiency of protection against thermal inactivation of enzymes.
海藻糖已被描述为几种大分子结构和功能的最佳稳定剂。尽管其他糖类也能稳定大分子，但没有一种能像海藻糖那样有效。海藻糖的非凡作用归因于其多种特性，比如与膜形成氢键或改变蛋白质溶剂化层的能力。然而，这些解释总会引出一个问题：为什么海藻糖比其他糖类更有效？在此，我们表明海藻糖的水合体积比其他相关糖类更大。根据我们的结果，海藻糖占据的体积至少是蔗糖、麦芽糖、葡萄糖和果糖的2.5倍。我们将此特性与保护酶的结构和功能免受热失活的能力相关联。当所有糖类的浓度按所占体积百分比进行校正后，它们表现出相同的有效性。我们的结果表明，由于这种更大的水合体积，海藻糖能够替代溶液中更多的水分子，而这一特性与其有效性密切相关。最后，这些数据促使我们得出结论，较高的尺寸排阻效应是酶热失活保护效率差异的原因。
