ESR study of interfacial hydration layers of polypeptides in water-filled nanochannels and in vitrified bulk solvents

Simple Cryoprotectant-Free Method to Advance Pulsed Dipolar ESR Spectroscopy for Capturing Protein Conformational Ensembles

Double electron-electron resonance (DEER) is a powerful technique for studying protein conformations. To preserve the room-temperature ensemble, proteins are usually shock-frozen in liquid nitrogen prior to DEER measurements. The use of cryoprotectant additives is, therefore, necessary to ensure the formation of a vitrified state. Here, we present a simple modification of the freezing process using a flexible fused silica microcapillary, which increases the freezing rates and thus enables DEER measurement without the use of cryoprotectants. The Bid protein, which is highly sensitive to cryoprotectant additives, is used as a model. We show that DEER with the simple modification can successfully reveal the cold denaturation of Bid, which was not possible with the conventional DEER preparations. The DEER result reveals the nature of Bid folding. Our method advances DEER for capturing the chemically and thermally induced conformational changes of a protein in a cryoprotectant-free medium.

Structural polymorphism and substrate promiscuity of a ribosome-associated molecular chaperone

Trigger factor (TF) is a highly conserved multi-domain molecular chaperone that exerts its chaperone activity at the ribosomal tunnel exit from which newly synthesized nascent chains emerge. TF also displays promiscuous substrate binding for a large number of cytosolic proteins independent of ribosome binding. We asked how TF recognizes a variety of substrates while existing in a monomer-dimer equilibrium. Paramagnetic nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy were used to show that dimeric TF displays a high degree of structural polymorphism in solution. A series of peptides has been generated to quantify their TF binding affinities in relation with their sequence compositions. The results confirmed a previous predication that TF preferentially binds to peptide fragments that are rich in aromatic and positively charged amino acids. NMR paramagnetic relaxation enhancement analysis showed that TF utilizes multiple binding sites, located in the chaperone domain and part of the prolyl trans-cis isomerization domain, to interact with these peptides. Dimerization of TF effectively sequesters most of the substrate binding sites, which are expected to become accessible upon binding to the ribosome as a monomer. As TF lacks ATPase activity, which is commonly used to trigger conformational changes within molecular chaperones in action, the ribosome-binding-associated disassembly and conformational rearrangements may be the underlying regulatory mechanism of its chaperone activity.

Structural Characterization of Proteins Adsorbed at Nanoporous Materials

A nanoporous material has been applied for the development of functional nanobiomaterials by utilizing its uniform pore structure and large adsorption capacity. The structure and stability of biomacromolecules, such as peptide, oligonucleotide, and protein, are primary factors to govern the performance of nanobiomaterials, so that their direct characterization methodologies are in progress. In this review, we focus on recent topics in the structural characterization of protein molecules adsorbed at a nanoporous material with uniform meso-sized pores. The thermal stabilities of the adsorbed proteins are also summarized to discuss whether the structure of the adsorbed protein molecules can be stabilized or not.

Water Structure and Properties at Hydrophilic and Hydrophobic Surfaces

The properties of water on both molecular and macroscopic surfaces critically influence a wide range of physical behaviors, with applications spanning from membrane science to catalysis to protein engineering. Yet, our current understanding of water interfacing molecular and material surfaces is incomplete, in part because measurement of water structure and molecular-scale properties challenges even the most advanced experimental characterization techniques and computational approaches. This review highlights progress in the ongoing development of tools working to answer fundamental questions on the principles that govern the interactions between water and surfaces. One outstanding and critical question is what universal molecular signatures capture the hydrophobicity of different surfaces in an operationally meaningful way, since traditional macroscopic hydrophobicity measures like contact angles fail to capture even basic properties of molecular or extended surfaces with any heterogeneity at the nanometer length scale. Resolving this grand challenge will require close interactions between state-of-the-art experiments, simulations, and theory, spanning research groups and using agreed-upon model systems, to synthesize an integrated knowledge of solvation water structure, dynamics, and thermodynamics.

Deciphering complex dynamics of water counteraction around secondary structural elements of allosteric protein complex: Case study of SAP-SLAM system in signal transduction cascade

The first hydration shell of a protein exhibits heterogeneous behavior owing to several attributes, majorly local polarity and structural flexibility as revealed by solvation dynamics of secondary structural elements. We attempt to recognize the change in complex water counteraction generated due to substantial alteration in flexibility during protein complex formation. The investigation is carried out with the signaling lymphocytic activation molecule (SLAM) family of receptors, expressed by an array of immune cells, and interacting with SLAM-associated protein (SAP), composed of one SH2 domain. All atom molecular dynamics simulations are employed to the aqueous solutions of free SAP and SLAM-peptide bound SAP. We observed that water dynamics around different secondary structural elements became highly affected as well as nicely correlated with the SLAM-peptide induced change in structural rigidity obtained by thermodynamic quantification. A few instances of contradictory dynamic features of water to the change in structural flexibility are explained by means of occluded polar residues by the peptide. For βD, EFloop, and BGloop, both structural flexibility and solvent accessibility of the residues confirm the obvious contribution. Most importantly, we have quantified enhanced restriction in water dynamics around the second Fyn-binding site of the SAP due to SAP-SLAM complexation, even prior to the presence of Fyn. This observation leads to a novel argument that SLAM induced more restricted water molecules could offer more water entropic contribution during the subsequent Fyn binding and provide enhanced stability to the SAP-Fyn complex in the signaling cascade. Finally, SLAM induced water counteraction around the second binding site of the SAP sheds light on the allosteric property of the SAP, which becomes an integral part of the underlying signal transduction mechanism.

The role of conformational heterogeneity in regulating the apoptotic activity of BAX protein

Inactive BAX exists in two states. A shift in the equilibrium would initiate apoptosis.

Evidence for an Induced-Fit Process Underlying the Activation of Apoptotic BAX by an Intrinsically Disordered BimBH3 Peptide

Apoptotic BAX protein functions as a critical gateway to mitochondria-mediated apoptosis. A diversity of stimuli has been implicated in initiating BAX activation, but the triggering mechanism remains elusive. Here we study the interaction of BAX with an intrinsically disordered BH3 motif of Bim protein (BimBH3) using ESR techniques. Upon incubation with BAX, BimBH3 binds to BAX at helices 1/6 trigger site to initiate conformational changes of BAX, which in turn promotes the formation of BAX oligomers. The study strategy is twofold: while BAX oligomerization was monitored through spectral changes of spin-labeled BAX, the binding kinetics was studied by observing time-dependent changes of spin-labeled BimBH3. Meanwhile, conformational transition between the unstructured and structured BimBH3 was measured. We show that helical propensity of the BimBH3 is increased upon binding to BAX but is then reduced after being released from the activated BAX; the release is due to the BimBH3-induced conformational change of BAX that is a prerequisite for the oligomer assembling. Intermediate states are identified, offering a key snapshot of the coupled folding and binding process. Our results provide a quantitative mechanistic description of the BAX activation and reveal new insights into the mechanism underlying the interactions between BAX and BH3-mimetic peptide.

Concurrent observation of bulk and protein hydration water by spin-label ESR under nanoconfinement

Under nanoconfinement the formation of crystalline ice is suppressed, allowing the study of water dynamics at subfreezing temperatures. Here we report a temperature-dependent investigation (170-260 K) of the behavior of hydration water under nanoconfinement by ESR techniques. A 26-mer-long peptide and the Bax protein are studied. This study provides site-specific information about the different local hydrations concurrently present in the protein/peptide solution, enabling a decent comparison of the hydration molecules-those that are buried inside, in contact with, and detached from the protein surface. Such a comparison is not possible without employing ESR under nanoconfinement. Though the confined bulk and surface hydrations behave differently, they both possess a transition similar to the reported fragile-to-strong crossover transition around 220 K. On the contrary, this transition is absent for the hydration near the buried sites of the protein. The activation energy determined under nanoconfinement is found to be lower in surface hydration than in bulk hydration. The protein structural flexibility, derived from the interspin distance distributions P(r) at different temperatures, is obtained by dipolar ESR spectroscopy. The P(r) result demonstrates that the structural flexibility is strongly correlated with the transition in the surface water, corroborating the origin of the protein dynamical transition at subfreezing temperatures.