Search results for "Protein tertiary structure"
showing 10 items of 24 documents
Interaction of iron(II)-heme and artemisinin with a peptide mimic of Plasmodium falciparum HRP-II
2007
Abstract The interaction of heme or heme-artemisinin adducts (heme-art) with different peptides mimicking repeat sequences of the Histidine-Rich-Protein-II of Plasmodium falciparum (PfHRP-II) was investigated. The pseudo-first order rate constants of the coordination of heme or heme-art onto a histidine rich peptide, used as a mimic of PfHRP-II putative heme binding sequence, are of the same order of magnitude, namely 42 and 14 s −1 , respectively. Despite the intrinsic reactivity of the carbonyl at C10 of heme-art toward a hydroxyl function, a peptide containing a serine or threonine residue does not readily react with heme-art adducts. Therefore, a much higher affinity of heme-art compare…
Thermal aggregation of bovine serum albumin at different pH: comparison with human serum albumin.
2007
We report here a study on thermal aggregation of BSA at two different pH values selected to be close to the isoelectric point (pI) of this protein. Our aim is to better understand the several steps and mechanisms accompanying the aggregation process. For this purpose we have performed kinetics of integrated intensity emission of intrinsic and extrinsic dyes, tryptophans and ANS respectively, kinetics of Rayleigh scattering and of turbidity. The results confirm the important role played by conformational changes in the tertiary structure, especially in the exposure of internal hydrophobic regions that promote intermolecular interactions. We also confirm that the absence of electrostatic repu…
Oxidation Enhances Human Serum Albumin Thermal Stability and Changes the Routes of Amyloid Fibril Formation
2014
Oxidative damages are linked to several aging-related diseases and are among the chemical pathways determining protein degradation. Specifically, interplay of oxidative stress and protein aggregation is recognized to have a link to the loss of cellular function in pathologies like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Interaction between protein and reactive oxygen species may indeed induce small changes in protein structure and lead to the inhibition/modification of protein aggregation process, potentially determining the formation of species with different inherent toxicity. Understanding the temperate relationship between these events can be of utmost importance in unraveling the molecul…
Conformational Change in the Pheromone-binding Protein fromBombyx mori Induced by pH and by Interaction with Membranes
1999
The pheromone-binding protein (PBP) from Bombyx mori was expressed in Escherichia coli periplasm. It specifically bound radiolabeled bombykol, the natural pheromone for this species. It appeared as a single band both in native and SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and was also homogeneous in most chromatographic systems. However, in ion-exchange chromatography, multiple forms sometimes appeared. Attempts to separate them revealed that they could be converted into one another. Analysis of the protein by circular dichroism and fluorescence spectroscopy demonstrated that its tertiary structure was sensitive to pH changes and that a dramatic conformational transition occurred between pH 6.…
Mutational analysis of disulfide bonds in the trypsin-reactive subdomain of a Bowman-Birk-type inhibitor of trypsin and chymotrypsin--cooperative ver…
1998
It is widely believed that protein folding is a hierarchical process proceeding from secondary structure via subdomains and domains towards the complete tertiary structure. Accordingly, protein subdomains should behave as independent folding units. However, this prediction would underestimate the well-established structural significance of tertiary context and domain interfaces in proteins. The principal objective of this work was to distinguish between autonomous and cooperative refolding of protein subdomains by means of mutational analysis. The double-headed Bowman-Birk inhibitor of trypsin and chymotrypsin of known crystal structure was selected for study. The relative orientation of th…
Leucine-58 in the putative 5th helical region of human interleukin (IL)-6 is important for activation of the IL-6 signal transducer, gp130
1995
A model of the tertiary structure of human IL-6, derived from the crystal-structure of granulocyte-colony stimulating factor, reveals a 5th helical region in the loop between the first and second alpha-helix. To investigate the importance of this region for biological activity of IL-6, residues Glu-52, Ser-53, Ser-54, Lys-55, Glu-56, Leu-58, and Glu-60 were individually replaced by alanine. IL-6.Leu-58Ala displayed a 5-fold reduced biological activity on the IL-6 responsive human cell lines XG-1 and A375. This reduction in bioactivity was shown to be due to a decreased capacity of the mutant protein to trigger IL-6 receptor-alpha-chain-dependent binding to the IL-6 signal transducer, gp130.
Aggregation Kinetics of Bovine Serum Albumin Studied by FTIR Spectroscopy and Light Scattering
2003
To investigate which type of structural and conformational changes is involved in the aggregation processes of bovine serum albumin (BSA), we have performed thermal aggregation kinetics in D(2)O solutions of this protein. The tertiary conformational changes are followed by Amide II band, the secondary structural changes and the formation of beta-aggregates by the Amide I' band and, finally, the hydrodynamic radius of aggregates by dynamic light scattering. The results show, as a function of pD, that: tertiary conformational changes are more rapid as pD increases; the aggregation proceeds through formation of ordered aggregates (oligomers) at pD far from the isoelectric point of the protein;…
Single-molecule FRET studies of counterion effects on the free energy landscape of human mitochondrial lysine tRNA.
2011
The folding energy landscape of RNA is greatly affected by interactions between the RNA and counterions that neutralize the backbone negative charges and may also participate in tertiary contacts. Valence, size, coordination number, and electron shell structure can all contribute to the energetic stabilization of specific RNA conformations. Using single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET), we have examined the folding properties of the RNA transcript of human mitochondrial tRNA(Lys), which possesses two different folded states in addition to the unfolded one under conditions of thermodynamic equilibrium. We have quantitatively analyzed the degree of RNA tertiary structu…
The silicatein propeptide acts as inhibitor/modulator of self-organization during spicule axial filament formation.
2013
Silicateins are crucial enzymes that are involved in formation of the inorganic biosilica scaffold of the spicular skeleton of siliceous sponges. We show that silicatein acquires its structure-guiding and enzymatically active state by processing of silicatein from pro-silicatein to the mature enzyme. A recombinant propeptide (PROP) of silicatein from the siliceous demosponge Suberites domuncula was prepared, and antibodies were raised against the peptide. In sponge tissue, these antibodies reacted with both surface structures and the central region of the spicules. Using phage display expression, spicule-binding 12-mer peptides were identified that are rich in histidine residues. In the pre…
Global stability of protein folding from an empirical free energy function
2013
The principles governing protein folding stand as one of the biggest challenges of Biophysics. Modeling the global stability of proteins and predicting their tertiary structure are hard tasks, due in part to the variety and large number of forces involved and the difficulties to describe them with sufficient accuracy. We have developed a fast, physics-based empirical potential, intended to be used in global structure prediction methods. This model considers four main contributions: Two entropic factors, the hydrophobic effect and configurational entropy, and two terms resulting from a decomposition of close-packing interactions, namely the balance of the dispersive interactions of folded an…