Compactness of Protein Folds Alters Disulfide-Bond Reducibility by Three Orders of Magnitude: A Comprehensive Kinetic Case Study on the Reduction of Differently Sized Tryptophan Cage Model Proteins.

A new approach to monitor disulfide-bond reduction in the vicinity of aromatic cluster(s) has been derived by using the near-UV range (λ=266-293 nm) of electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra. By combining the results from NMR and ECD spectroscopy, the 3D fold characteristics and associated reduction rate constants (k) of E19_SS, which is a highly thermostable, disulfide-bond reinforced 39-amino acid long exenatide mimetic, and its N-terminally truncated derivatives have been determined under different experimental conditions. Single disulfide bond reduction of the E19_SS model (with an 18-fold excess of tris(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine, pH 7, 37 °C) takes hours, which is 20-30 times longer than that expected, and thus, would not reach completion by applying commonly used reduction protocols. It is found that structural, steric, and electrostatic factors influence the reduction rate, resulting in orders of magnitude differences in reduction half-lives (900>t1/2 >1 min) even for structurally similar, well-folded derivatives of a small model protein.

Unwanted hydrolysis or α/ß-peptide bond formation: how long should the rate-limiting coupling step take?

Nowadays, in Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis (SPPS), being either manual, automated, continuous flow or microwave-assisted, the reaction with various coupling reagents takes place via in situ active ester formation. In this study, the formation and stability of these key active esters were investigated with time-resolved 1H NMR by using the common PyBOP/DIEA and HOBt/DIC coupling reagents for both α- and ß-amino acids. Parallel to the amide bond formation, the hydrolysis of the α/ß-active esters, a side reaction that is a considerable efficacy limiting factor, was studied. Based on the chemical nature/constitution of the active esters, three amino acid categories were determined: (i) the rapidly hydrolyzing ones (t < 6 h) with smaller (Ala) or even longer side chains (Arg) holding a large protecting group; (ii) branched amino acids (Ile, Thr) with slowly hydrolyzing (6 < t < 24 h) propensities, and (iii) non-hydrolyzing ones, such as the hard-to-couple ß-amino acids or ß-sugar amino acid derivatives, stable for longer times (t > 24 h) in solution. The current insight into the kinetics of this key hydrolysis side reaction serves as a guide to optimize the coupling conditions of α- and ß-amino acids, thereby saving time and minimizing the amounts of reagents and amino acids to be used - all key factors of more environmentally friendly chemistry.

Effect of amino substitution on the excited state dynamics of uracil.

The excited state deactivation of two amino-substituted uracils, 5-aminouracil (5AU) and 6-aminouracil (6AU) in aqueous solution was studied by femtosecond fluorescence upconversion. The fluorescence of 6AU decays as fast as that of uracil with a unique time constant of about 100 femtoseconds. The fluorescence of 5AU exhibits a more complex behavior, fundamentally different from what we found in any other uracils: the decays are globally slower (up to several picoseconds) and depend strongly on the wavelength. This difference is attributed to the particular character of the amino group, affecting the out-of-plane motion of the 5-substituent which has been shown to be crucial for the ultrafast internal conversion occurring in uracils. Our observations indicate instead the formation of a transient fluorescent state which in turn is deactivated by a different relaxation process specific to the amino group.

Model-free deconvolution of femtosecond kinetic data.

Though shorter laser pulses can also be produced, pulses of the 100 fs range are typically used in femtosecond kinetic measurements, which are comparable to characteristic times of the studied processes, making detection of the kinetic response functions inevitably distorted by convolution with the pulses applied. A description of this convolution in terms of experiments and measurable signals is given, followed by a detailed discussion of a large number of available methods to solve the convolution equation to get the undistorted kinetic signal, without any presupposed kinetic or photophysical model of the underlying processes. A thorough numerical test of several deconvolution methods is described, and two iterative time-domain methods (Bayesian and Jansson deconvolution) along with two inverse filtering frequency-domain methods (adaptive Wiener filtering and regularization) are suggested to use for the deconvolution of experimental femtosecond kinetic data sets. Adaptation of these methods to typical kinetic curve shapes is described in detail. We find that the model-free deconvolution gives satisfactory results compared to the classical "reconvolution" method where the knowledge of the kinetic and photophysical mechanism is necessary to perform the deconvolution. In addition, a model-free deconvolution followed by a statistical inference of the parameters of a model function gives less biased results for the relevant parameters of the model than simple reconvolution. We have also analyzed real-life experimental data and found that the model-free deconvolution methods can be successfully used to get undistorted kinetic curves in that case as well. A graphical computer program to perform deconvolution via inverse filtering and additional noise filters is also provided as Supporting Information. Though deconvolution methods described here were optimized for femtosecond kinetic measurements, they can be used for any kind of convolved data where measured experimental shapes are similar.