title: Detection-dependent kinetics as a probe of folding landscape microstructure.
abstract: The folding landscapes of polypeptides and proteins exhibit a hierarchy of local minima. The causes range from proline isomerization all the way down to microstructure in the free energy caused by residual frustration inherent in even the best 20 amino acid design. The corresponding time scales range from hours to submicroseconds. The smallest microstructures are difficult to detect. We have measured the folding/unfolding kinetics of the engineered trpzip2 peptide at different tryptophan fluorescence wavelengths, each yielding a different rate. Wavelength-dependent folding kinetics on 0.1-2 mus time scales show that different microstructures with a range of solvent exposure and local dynamics are populated. We estimate a lower limit for the roughness of the free energy surface based on the range of rates observed.
authors.affiliation: Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology and Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61801, USA. weiyang@fas.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Wei Yuan
authors.initials: WY
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gruebele
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005453:Fluorescence; D007700:Kinetics; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D008956:Models, Chemical; D017510:Protein Folding; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D013816:Thermodynamics; D014364:Tryptophan / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins; D014364:Tryptophan