Premium
Engineering a β‐Helical d,l ‐Peptide for Folding in Polar Media
Author(s) -
Kulp John L.,
Clark Thomas D.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.200901129
Subject(s) - random coil , chemistry , crystallography , circular dichroism , peptide , protein secondary structure , helix (gastropod) , protein folding , stereochemistry , ecology , biochemistry , snail , biology
β Helices—helices formed by alternating d,l ‐peptides and stabilized by β‐sheet hydrogen bonding—are found naturally in only a handful of highly hydrophobic peptides. This paper explores the scope of β‐helical structure by presenting the first design and biophysical characterization of a hydrophilic d,l ‐peptide, 1 , that forms a β helix in methanol. The design of 1 is based on the β‐hairpin/β helix—a new supersecondary that had been characterized previously only for hydrophobic peptides in nonpolar solvents. Incorporating polar residues in 1 provided solubility in methanol, in which the peptide adopts the expected β‐hairpin/β‐helical structure, as evidenced by CD, analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC), NMR spectroscopy, and NMR‐based structure calculations. Upon titration with water (at constant peptide concentration), the structure in methanol ( 1 m ) transitions cooperatively to an extended conformation ( 1 w ) resembling a cyclic β‐hairpin; observation of an isodichroic point in the solvent‐dependent CD spectra indicates that this transition is a two‐state process. In contrast, neither 1 m nor 1 w show cooperative thermal melting; instead, their structures appear intact at temperatures as high as 65 °C; this observation suggests that steric constraint is dominant in stabilizing these structures. Finally, the 1 H NMR CαH spectroscopic resonances of 1 m are downfield‐shifted with respect to random‐coil values, a hitherto unreported property for β helices that appears to be a general feature of these structures. These results show for the first time that an appropriately designed β‐helical peptide can fold stably in a polar solvent; furthermore, the structural and spectroscopic data reported should prove useful in the future design and characterization of water‐soluble β helices.