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Photo of Anders Irbäck

Anders Irbäck

Professor

Photo of Anders Irbäck

Equilibrium simulation of trp-cage in the presence of protein crowders.

Author

  • Anna Bille
  • Björn Linse
  • Sandipan Mohanty
  • Anders Irbäck

Summary, in English

While steric crowders tend to stabilize globular proteins, it has been found that protein crowders can have an either stabilizing or destabilizing effect, where a destabilization may arise from nonspecific attractive interactions between the test protein and the crowders. Here, we use Monte Carlo replica-exchange methods to explore the equilibrium behavior of the miniprotein trp-cage in the presence of protein crowders. Our results suggest that the surrounding crowders prevent trp-cage from adopting its global native fold, while giving rise to a stabilization of its main secondary-structure element, an α-helix. With the crowding agent used (bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor), the trp-cage-crowder interactions are found to be specific, involving a few key residues, most of which are prolines. The effects of these crowders are contrasted with those of hard-sphere crowders.

Department/s

  • Computational Biology and Biological Physics - Has been reorganised

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Publication/Series

Journal of Chemical Physics

Volume

143

Issue

17

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

American Institute of Physics (AIP)

Topic

  • Other Physics Topics
  • Biophysics

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0021-9606