Measurement and modeling of acid dissociation constants of tri-peptides containing Glu, Gly, and His using potentiometry and generalized multiplicative analysis of variance

Quantum-Chemical ab initio Study of Side Chain pKa of Linear and Cyclic Lysine Dipeptides

Cyclic dipeptides show interesting biological activities such as antitumor, antiviral and so on. In biological systems, the bioavailability of drugs is determined by several parameters such as pKa values. In this study, we used DFT and thermodynamics cycle to determine pKa value of side chain of lysine in linear and cyclic dipeptides. All considered dipeptides were optimized using B3LYP and RMSD tool was used to compare the optimized structures. The calculated pKa values were compared with the available experimental data. Our results show that pKa of side chain of lysine increases for cyclic dipeptides compared to the linear ones. To justify the reason of increasing of pKa of cyclic dipeptides, we used NBO and AIM analyses. The analyses showed that a hydrogen bond in cyclic lysine dipeptides is responsible for increasing of pKa.

Heavy metal complexation of thiol-containing peptides from soy glycinin hydrolysates

Many thiol-containing molecules show heavy metal complexation ability and are used as antidotes. In this study, the potential function associated with thiol-containing peptides (TCPs) from soy protein hydrolysates as natural detoxicants for heavy metals is reported. TCPs enriched by Thiopropyl-Sepharose 6B covalent chromatography had different molecular weight distributions as well as different numbers of proton dissociable groups, depending on the proteases and degree of hydrolysis. The major contribution of sulfhydryl groups was confirmed by the largest pH decrease between 8.0 and 8.5 of the pH titration curves. The complexation of TCPs with heavy metalswas evaluated by stability constants (β_n) of TCP-metal complexes whose stoichiometry was found to be 1:1 (ML) and 1:2 (ML₂). TCPs from degree of hydrolysis of 25% hydrolysates gave high affinities towards Hg²⁺, Cd²⁺, and Pb²⁺ (giving similar or even bigger lgβ values than that of glutathione). A significantly positive correlation was found between the logarithm of stability constants for ML₂ (lgβ₂) and the sulfhydryl group content. Molecular weight distribution of TCPs affected the complexation with Pb²⁺ notably more than Hg²⁺ and Cd²⁺. These results suggest that soy TCPs have the potential to be used in the formulation of functional foods to counteract heavy metal accumulation in humans.