Designing heterodimeric two-stranded alpha-helical coiled-coils. Effects of hydrophobicity and alpha-helical propensity on protein folding, stability, and specificity.
The E/K coil, a heterodimeric coiled-coil, has been designed as a universal peptide capture and delivery system for use in applications such as biosensors and as an expression and affinity purification tag. In this design, heterodimer formation is specified through the placement of charged residues at the e and g positions of the heptad repeat such that the E coil contains all glutamic acid residues at these positions, and the K coil contains all lysine residues at these positions. The affinity and stability of the E/K coil have been modified to allow a greater range of conditions for association and dissociation. Increasing the hydrophobicity of the coiled-coil core, by substituting isoleucine for valine, gave increases in stability of 2.81 and 3.73 kcal/mol (0.47 kcal/mol/substitution). Increasing the alpha-helical propensity of residues outside the core, by substituting alanine for serine, yielded increases in stability of 2.68 and 3.28 kcal/mol (0.41 and 0.45 kcal/mol/substitution). These sequence changes yielded a series of heterodimeric coiled-coils whose stabilities varied from 6.8 to 11.2 kcal/mol, greatly expanding their scope for use in protein engineering and biomedical applications.
Department of Biochemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H7 Canada.
Jennifer R
JR
Litowski
Robert S
RS
Hodges
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D002942:Circular Dichroism; D019281:Dimerization; D004355:Drug Stability; D019077:Helix-Turn-Helix Motifs; D007202:Indicators and Reagents; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010455:Peptides / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry*; D017510:Protein Folding; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary
D007202:Indicators and Reagents; D010455:Peptides