Protein Folding and Techniques Flashcards
What are the three classifications of proteins?
- Globular (cytosolic)
- Fibrous
- Membrane
What are the properties of globular proteins?
- Soluble
- Hydrophobic residues are buried (interior)
- Hydrophilic residues are exposes (exterior)
What are the properties of fibrous proteins?
- Have regularly repeating elements
- Protective and tough
ex. keratin, collagen
What are the properties of membrane proteins?
- Very hydrophobic
- Hydrophobic residues outside
- Hydrophilic residues insides
ex. transmembrane receptors, channels, pores
What are the dynamic properties of proteins?
- Equilibrium between folded and unfolded proteins (tends to favors native fold/conformation)
- Flexible structures
- Constantly moving, fluctuating, “breathing”
- Interact with solvent
What are the 2 side chains that move the most?
Lys and Arg (long and floppy)
What are the properties of intrinsically disorded proteins?
- Do not adopt folds
- Rich in low complexity sequence (repetitive sequence)
- Polar/charged amino acids (cannot fold to accommodate hydrophobic residues)
- Lack bulky hydrophobic amino acids
What are proteins sensitive to?
- pH
- Temperature
- Detergents (disrupt hydrophobic interactions, exposes them)
- Chaotropic agents (disrupt hydrogen bonding) (uear and guanidium)
- Reducing agents (betamercaptoethanol (BME) and dithiotheritol (DTT))
What are the major takeaways from Anfisen’s classical experiement on RNase A?
- Denatured proteins can (often) be refolded
- Protein folding is a reversible process
- Protein folding (tertiary structure) is determined by primary structure/amino acid sequence
What is Anfinsen’s experiment?
- Protein is denatured with urea and disulfide bonds are cleaved by mercaptoethanol
- Only mercap is removed causing incorrect disulfide bonds to from
- Subsequent removal of urea leaves an inactive protein due to messed up primary structure
- Mercap added back in absence of O2 to cleave disulfide bonds and allow correct disulfide bonds to form
- Urea and mercap are removed and active protein is reformed
How do we know proteins do not fold randomly?
- Levinthal’s paradox (takes too long for protein to randomly fold correctly)
- Proteins fold in seconds
What are the stages of the protein folding pathway?
- Hydrophobic interactions bury nonpolar side chains (hydrophobic collapse)
- Secondary structures form (alpha helix and beta sheets)
- Supersecondary structure forms
- Molten globule forms (intermediate between secondary and tertiary strucure)
- Molten globule stabilized to get an ensemble of native folds
How do chaperone proteins aid in protein folding?
-Helps protein navigate rugged terrain of many kinetic barriers
-Pushes protein down energy pathway to native state rather than aggregation (much lower energy state than native fold but inactive protein)
What do protein disulfide isomerases do? (accessory protein/chaperone)
Mediate disulfide bridge formation
What are molecular chaperones and what are their properties>
- Proteins that protect folding proteins (interact with or stabilize protein as it folds)
- Not present in final protein structures
- Recognize and bind hydrophobic surfaces to block aggregation
- require ATP for energy
- Work cooperatively with each other
example: Heat shock proteins (HSP) in prokaryotes and eukaryotes,
GroEL/GroES chaperonin in E.coli, HSP60/HSP10 in eukaryotes