title: Simple electrostatic model improves designed protein sequences.
abstract: Electrostatic interactions are important for both protein stability and function, including binding and catalysis. As protein design moves into these areas, an accurate description of electrostatic energy becomes necessary. Here, we show that a simple distance-dependent Coulombic function parameterized by a comparison to Poisson-Boltzmann calculations is able to capture some of these electrostatic interactions. Specifically, all three helix N-capping interactions in the engrailed homeodomain fold are recovered using the newly parameterized model. The stability of this designed protein is similar to a protein forced by sequence restriction to have beneficial electrostatic interactions.
authors.affiliation: Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, USA.
authors.forename: Eric S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Zollars
authors.forename: Shannon A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.forename: Stephen L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Mayo
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011489:Protein Denaturation; D015202:Protein Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D055672:Static Electricity; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D029721:Drosophila Proteins; C063459:En protein, Drosophila; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins; D014157:Transcription Factors