Unfolding of Plasmodium falciparum triosephosphate isomerase in urea and guanidinium chloride solutions. Evidence for a novel disulfide exchange reaction in a covalently crosslinked mutant

Gokhale, RS and Ray, Soumya S and Balaram, Hemalatha and Balaram, Padmanabhan (1998) Unfolding of Plasmodium falciparum triosephosphate isomerase in urea and guanidinium chloride solutions. Evidence for a novel disulfide exchange reaction in a covalently crosslinked mutant. In: Biochemistry, 38 (1). pp. 423-431.

PDF bi981087s.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Registered users only Download (136kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

The conformational stability of Plasmodium falciparum triosephosphate isomerase (TIMWT) enzyme has been investigated in urea and guanidinium chloride (GdmCl) solutions using circular dichroism, fluorescence, and size-exclusion chromatography. The dimeric enzyme is remarkably stable in urea solutions. It retains considerable secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure even in 8 M urea. In contrast, the unfolding transition is complete by 2.4 M GdmCl. Although the secondary as well as the tertiary interactions melt before the perturbation of the quaternary structure, these studies imply that the dissociation of the dimer into monomers ultimately leads to the collapse of the structure, suggesting that the interfacial interactions play a major role in determining multimeric protein stability. The Cm(urea)/Cm(GdmCl) ratio (where Cm is the concentration of the denaturant required at the transition midpoint) is unusually high for triosephosphate isomerase as compared to other monomeric and dimeric proteins. A disulfide cross-linked mutant protein (Y74C) engineered to form two disulfide cross-links across the interface (13-74‘) and (13‘-74) is dramatically destablized in urea. The unfolding transition is complete by 6 M urea and involves a novel mechanism of dimer dissociation through intramolecular thiol−disulfide exchange.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Biochemistry
Publisher:	American Chemical Society
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to American Chemical Society.
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Molecular Biophysics Unit
Date Deposited:	14 Dec 2010 07:13
Last Modified:	14 Dec 2010 07:13
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/33875

Actions (login required)

View Item