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| 3. |
- Bille, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Equilibrium simulation of trp-cage in the presence of protein crowders.
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Chemical Physics. - : AIP Publishing. - 0021-9606 .- 1089-7690. ; 143:17
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 4. |
- Bille, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Local Unfolding and Aggregation Mechanisms of SOD1: A Monte Carlo Exploration.
- 2013
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Ingår i: The Journal of Physical Chemistry Part B. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1520-5207 .- 1520-6106. ; 117:31, s. 9194-9202
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Copper, zinc superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) is a ubiquitous homodimeric enzyme, whose misfolding and aggregation play a potentially key role in the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). SOD1 aggregation is thought to be preceded by dimer dissociation and metal loss, but the mechanisms by which the metal-free monomer aggregates remain incompletely understood. Here we use implicit solvent all-atom Monte Carlo (MC) methods to investigate the local unfolding dynamics of the β-barrel-forming SOD1 monomer. Although event-to-event variations are large, on average, we find clear differences in dynamics among the eight strands forming the β-barrel. Most dynamic is the eighth strand, β8, which is located in the dimer interface of native SOD1. For the four strands in or near the dimer interface (β1, β2, β7, and β8), we perform aggregation simulations to assess the propensity of these chain segments to self-associate. We find that β1 and β2 readily self-associate to form intermolecular parallel β-sheets, whereas β8 shows a very low aggregation propensity.
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| 5. |
- Bille, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Peptide folding in the presence of interacting protein crowders
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Chemical Physics. - : AIP Publishing. - 0021-9606 .- 1089-7690. ; 144:17
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using Monte Carlo methods, we explore and compare the effects of two protein crowders, BPTI and GB1, on the folding thermodynamics of two peptides, the compact helical trp-cage and the β-hairpin-forming GB1m3. The thermally highly stable crowder proteins are modeled using a fixed backbone and rotatable side-chains, whereas the peptides are free to fold and unfold. In the simulations, the crowder proteins tend to distort the trp-cage fold, while having a stabilizing effect on GB1m3. The extent of the effects on a given peptide depends on the crowder type. Due to a sticky patch on its surface, BPTI causes larger changes than GB1 in the melting properties of the peptides. The observed effects on the peptides stem largely from attractive and specific interactions with the crowder surfaces, and differ from those seen in reference simulations with purely steric crowder particles.
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| 6. |
- Bille, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Stability and Local Unfolding of SOD1 in the Presence of Protein Crowders
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Physical Chemistry B. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1520-6106 .- 1520-5207. ; 123:9, s. 1920-1930
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using NMR and Monte Carlo (MC) methods, we investigate the stability and dynamics of superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) in homogeneous crowding environments, where either bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI) or the B1 domain of streptococcal protein G (PGB1) serves as a crowding agent. By NMR, we show that both crowders, and especially BPTI, cause a drastic loss in the overall stability of SOD1 in its apo monomeric form. Additionally, we determine chemical shift perturbations indicating that SOD1 interacts with the crowder proteins in a residue-specific manner that further depends on the identity of the crowding protein. Furthermore, the specificity of SOD1-crowder interactions is reciprocal: chemical shift perturbations on BPTI and PGB1 identify regions that interact preferentially with SOD1. By MC simulations, we investigate the local unfolding of SOD1 in the absence and presence of the crowders. We find that the crowders primarily interact with the long flexible loops of the folded SOD1 monomer. The basic mechanisms by which the SOD1 β-barrel core unfolds remain unchanged when adding the crowders. In particular, both with and without the crowders, the second β-sheet of the barrel is more dynamic and unfolding-prone than the first. Notably, the MC simulations (exploring the early stages of SOD1 unfolding) and the NMR experiments (under equilibrium conditions) identify largely the same set of PGB1 and BPTI residues as prone to form SOD1 contacts. Thus, contacts stabilizing the unfolded state of SOD1 in many cases appear to form early in the unfolding reaction.
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| 7. |
- Favrin, Giorgio, et al.
(författare)
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Folding of a small helical protein using hydrogen bonds and hydrophobicity forces.
- 2002
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Ingår i: Proteins. - : Wiley. - 0887-3585. ; 47:2, s. 99-105
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A reduced protein model with five to six atoms per amino acid and five amino acid types is developed and tested on a three-helix-bundle protein, a 46-amino acid fragment from staphylococcal protein A. The model does not rely on the widely used Go approximation, which ignores non-native interactions. We find that the collapse transition is considerably more abrupt for the protein A sequence than for random sequences with the same composition. The chain collapse is found to be at least as fast as helix formation. Energy minimization restricted to the thermodynamically favored topology gives a structure that has a root-mean-square deviation of 1.8 A from the native structure. The sequence-dependent part of our potential is pairwise additive. Our calculations suggest that fine-tuning this potential by parameter optimization is of limited use.
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| 8. |
- Favrin, Giorgio, et al.
(författare)
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Monte Carlo update for chain molecules: Biased Gaussian steps in torsional space
- 2001
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Ingår i: Journal of Chemical Physics. - : AIP Publishing. - 0021-9606 .- 1089-7690. ; 114:8, s. 8154-8158
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We develop a new elementary move for simulations of polymer chains in torsion angle space. The method is flexible and easy to implement. Tentative updates are drawn from a (conformation-dependent) Gaussian distribution that favors approximately local deformations of the chain. The degree of bias is controlled by a parameter b. The method is tested on a reduced model protein with 54 amino acids and the Ramachandran torsion angles as its only degrees of freedom, for different b. Without excessive fine tuning, we find that the effective step size can be increased by a factor of 3 compared to the unbiased b = 0 case. The method may be useful for kinetic studies, too.
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| 9. |
- Favrin, Giorgio, et al.
(författare)
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Oligomerization of amyloid A beta(16-22) peptides using hydrogen bonds and hydrophobicity forces
- 2004
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Ingår i: Biophysical Journal. - : Elsevier BV. - 1542-0086 .- 0006-3495. ; 87:6, s. 3657-3664
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The 16 - 22 amino-acid fragment of the beta-amyloid peptide associated with the Alzheimer's disease, Abeta, is capable of forming amyloid fibrils. Here we study the aggregation mechanism of Abeta(16-22) peptides by unbiased thermodynamic simulations at the atomic level for systems of one, three, and six Abeta(16-22) peptides. We find that the isolated Abeta(16-22) peptide is mainly a random coil in the sense that both the alpha-helix and beta-strand contents are low, whereas the three- and six-chain systems form aggregated structures with a high beta-sheet content. Furthermore, in agreement with experiments on Abeta(16-22) fibrils, we find that large parallel beta-sheets are unlikely to form. For the six-chain system, the aggregated structures can have many different shapes, but certain particularly stable shapes can be identified.
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| 10. |
- Favrin, Giorgio, et al.
(författare)
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Sequence-based study of two related proteins with different folding behaviors
- 2004
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Ingår i: Proteins. - : Wiley. - 0887-3585. ; 54:1, s. 8-12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Z(SPA-1) is an engineered protein that binds to its parent, the three-helix-bundle Z domain of staphylococcal protein A. Uncomplexed Z(SPA-1) shows a reduced helix content and a melting behavior that is less cooperative, compared with the wild-type Z domain. Here we show that the difference in folding behavior between these two sequences can be partly understood in terms of an off-lattice model with 5-6 atoms per amino acid and a minimalistic potential, in which folding is driven by backbone hydrogen bonding and effective hydrophobic attraction. (C) 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
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