Self-Assembly and Conformational Changes of Hydrophobin Classes at the Air-Water Interface.
We use surface-specific vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy (VSFG) to study the structure and self-assembling mechanism of the class I hydrophobin SC3 from Schizophyllum commune and the class II hydrophobin HFBI from Trichoderma reesei. We find that both hydrophobins readily accumulate at the water-air interface and form rigid, highly ordered protein films that give rise to prominent VSFG signals. We identify several resonances that are associated with β-sheet structures and assign them to the central β-barrel core present in both proteins. Differences between the hydrophobin classes are observed in their interfacial self-assembly. For HFBI, we observe no changes in conformation upon adsorption to the water surface. For SC3, we observe an increase in β-sheet-specific signals that supports a surface-driven self-assembly mechanism in which the central β-barrel remains intact and stacks into a larger-scale architecture, amyloid-like rodlets.
FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics AMOLF, Science Park 104, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Konrad
K
Meister
Physical Chemistry II, Ruhr University Bochum , Universitätsstr. 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany.
Alexander
A
Bäumer
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Tietotie 2, FI-02150 Espoo, Finland.
Geza R
GR
Szilvay
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Tietotie 2, FI-02150 Espoo, Finland.
Arja
A
Paananen
FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics AMOLF, Science Park 104, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Huib J
HJ
Bakker