Protein folding melting temperature

Lysozyme from bacteriophage T4 is a 164 amino acid polypeptide chain that folds into two domains (Figure 17.3) There are no disulfide bridges the two cysteine residues in the amino acid sequence, Cys 54 and Cys 97, are far apart in the folded structure. The stability of both the wild-type and mutant proteins is expressed as the melting temperature, Tm, which is the temperature at which 50% of the enzyme is inactivated during reversible beat denat-uration. For the wild-type T4 lysozyme the Tm is 41.9 °C. 

Temperature-sensitive mutations usually arise from a single mutation s effect on the stability of the protein. Temperature-sensitive mutations make the protein just unstable enough to unfold when the normal temperature is raised a few degrees. At normal temperatures (usually 37°C), the protein folds and is stable and active. However, at a slightly higher temperature (usually 40 to 50°C) the protein denatures (melts) and becomes inactive. The reason proteins unfold over such a narrow temperature range is that the folding process is very cooperative—each interaction depends on other interactions that depend on other interactions. 

A study of two of the most prominent and widespread osmolytes, betaine and beta-hydroxyectoine, by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) on bovine ribonu-clease A (RNase A) revealed an increase in the melting temperature Tm of RNase A of more than 12 K and of protein stability AG of 10.6 kj mol-1 at room temperature at a 3 M concentration of beta-hydroxyectoine. The heat capacity difference ACp between the folded and unfolded state was significantly increased. In contrast, betaine stabilized RNase A only at concentrations less than 3 M. When enzymes are applied in the presence of denaturants or at high temperature, beta-hydroxyectoine should be an efficient stabilizer. 

Furthermore, because many proteins are only marginally stable (DiU, Ghosh, and Schmit 2011), a correct description of nonbonded interactions is necessary for attaining qnantitative conformational equilibria, melting temperatures, and other thermodynamic properties associated with protein folding. For example, it was reported that a 28-residue miniprotein that adopts a PPa motif had a simulated melting tanperature... 

When a folded protein in solution is heated to a high enough temperature, its polypeptide chain will unfold to become the denatured protein—a process known as denaturation. The temperature at which most of the protein unfolds is called the melting temperature. The melting temperature of a certain protein is found to be 63°C, and the enthalpy of denaturation is 510 kJ/mol. 

Both the denaturation process in proteins and the melting transition (also referred to as the helix-to-coil transition) in nucleic acids have been modeled as a two-state transition, often referred to as the all-or-none or cooperative model. That is, the protein exists either in a completely folded or completely unfolded state, and the nucleic acid exists either as a fully ordered duplex or a fully dissociated monoplex. In both systems, the conformational flexibility, particularly in the high-temperature form, is great, so that numerous microstates associated with different conformers of the biopolymer are expected. However, the distinctions between the microstates are ignored and only the macrostates described earlier are considered. For small globular proteins and for some nucleic acid dissociation processes,11 the equilibrium between the two states can be represented as... 

At this temperature, the entropy change for dissolution of liquid hydrocarbons in water is zero. However, the entropy of protein denaturation is far from zero at this temperature but amounts to 17.6 J - K l per mole of amino acid residues (Privalov, 1979), a value that corresponds to an 8-fold increase of the number of possible configurations and is close to the value expected for the helix-coil transition of polypeptides (Schellman, 1955). This difference shows that an oil drop is an inadequate model for a globular protein. A more suitable model resembles that of a small crystal with a quite definite positive melting entropy (see also Bellow, 1977, 1978). 

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