Understanding the detailed mechanism of protein folding requires dynamic, site-specific stereochemical information. The short time response of vibrational spectroscopies allows evaluation of the distribution of populations in rapid equilibrium as the peptide unfolds. Spectral shifts associated with isotopic labels along with local stereochemical sensitivity of vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) allow determination of the segment sequence of unfolding. For a series of alanine-rich peptides that form ␣-helices in aqueous solution, we used isotopic labeling and VCD to demonstrate that the ␣-helix noncooperatively unwinds from the ends with increasing temperature. For these blocked peptides, the C-terminal is frayed at 5°C. Ab initio level theoretical simulations of the IR and VCD band shapes are used to analyze the spectra and to confirm the conformation of the labeled components. The VCD signals associated with the labeled residues are amplified by coupling to the nonlabeled parts of the molecule. Thus small labeled segments are detectable and stereochemically defined in moderately large peptides in this report of site-specific peptide VCD conformational analysis.

Articles you may be interested inSingle-conformation infrared spectra of model peptides in the amide I and amide II regions: Experiment-based determination of local mode frequencies and inter-mode coupling An empirical correction to amide group vacuum force fields is proposed in order to account for the influence of the aqueous environment on the CvO stretching vibration ͑amide I͒. The dependence of the vibrational absorption spectral intensities on the geometry is studied with density functional theory methods at the BPW91/6-31G** level for N-methyl acetamide interacting with a variety of of water molecule clusters hydrogen bonded to it. These cluster results are then generalized to form an empirical correction for the force field and dipole intensity of the amide I (CvO stretch͒ mode. As an example of its extension, the method is applied to a larger ͑␤-turn model͒ peptide molecule and its IR spectrum is simulated. The method provides realistic bandwidths for the amide I bands if the spectra are generated from the ab initio force field corrected by perturbation from an ensemble of solvent geometries obtained using molecular dynamic simulations.

Conformational properties of a 12-residue tryptophan zipper (trpzip) -hairpin peptide (AWAWENGKWAWK-NH 2 , a modification of the original trpzip2 sequence) are analyzed under equilibrium conditions using ECD and IR spectra of a series of variants, singly and doubly C 1 -labeled with 13 C on the amide CdO. The characteristic features of the 13 CdO component of the amide I′ IR band and their sensitivity to the local structure of the peptide are used to differentiate stabilities for parts of the hairpin structure. Doubly labeled peptide spectra indicate that the ends of the -strands are frayed and that the center part is more stable as would be expected from formation of a stable hydrophobic core consisting of four tryptophan residues, and supported by MD simulations. NMR analyses were used to determine a best fit solution structure that is in close agreement with that of trpzip2, except for a small variation in the turn geometry. The distinct vibrational coupling patterns of the labeled sites based on this structure are also well matched by ab initio DFT-level calculations of their IR spectral patterns. Thermal unfolding of the peptides as studied with CD spectra could be fit with an apparent two-state transition model. ECD senses only the tryptophan interactions (tertiary-like) and their overall environment, as shown by TD-DFT modeling of the Trp-Trp π-π* ECD. However, variation of the amide I IR spectra of 13 C-isotopomers showed that the thermal unfolding process is not cooperative in terms of the peptide backbone (secondary structure), since the transition temperatures sensed for labeled modes differ from those for the whole peptide. The thermal data also evidence dependence on concentration and pH but these cause little spectral variation. This study illustrates the consequences of multistate conformational change at the residue-or sequence-specific level in a system whose structure is dominated by hydrophobic collapse.

No abstract

Structural parameters for standard peptide helices (alpha, 3(10), 3(1) left-handed) were fully ab initio optimized for Ac-(L-Ala)(9)-NHMe and for Ac-(L-Pro)(9)-NHMe (poly-L-proline-PLP I and PLP II-forms), in order to better understand the relative stability and minimum energy geometries of these conformers and the dependence of the ir absorption and vibrational CD (VCD) spectra on detailed variation in these conformations. Only the 3(10)-helical Ala-based conformation was stable in vacuum for this decaamide structure, but both Pro-based conformers minimized successfully. Inclusion of solvent effects, by use of the conductor-like screening solvent model (COSMO), enabled ab initio optimizations [at the DFT/B3LYP/SV(P) level] without any constraints for the alpha- and 3(10)-helical Ala-based peptides as well as the two Pro-based peptides. The geometries obtained compare well with peptide chain torsion angles and hydrogen-bond distances found for these secondary structure types in x-ray structures of peptides and proteins. For the simulation of VCD spectra, force field and intensity response tensors were obtained ab initio for the complete Ala-based peptides in vacuum, but constrained to the COSMO optimized torsional angles, due to limitations of the solvent model. Resultant spectral patterns reproduce well many aspects of the experimental spectra and capture the differences observed for these various helical types.

Infrared absorption and vibrational circular dichroism (IR and VCD) spectra of model fragments of TrpZip-style beta-hairpin structures are simulated using density functional theory (DFT) methods to estimate the influence of fragment size, end effects, conformational irregularities, peptide side chains, and solvent. Different fragmentation schemes, computing the strands and turn segments separately, were tested by varying the sizes of each and their respective overlaps. For suitably overlapping fragments, atomic property tensors were found to be reliably transferable, as tested by their ability to generate simulated spectra in good agreement with results from ab initio DFT computations for the entire peptide. This fragment approach significantly reduces computational times and opens up a wider range of systems that can be studied with a DFT-based approach as compared to previous methods based on uniform repeating sequences. However, vacuum calculations do not adequately represent the frequency dispersion of solvated molecules, and thus, some alternate strategies for solvation correction are explored for improving the simulation accuracy. Unlike for regular periodic secondary structure, the solvent significantly impacts the spectral shapes of hairpins, due to the different degrees of hydration of individual amide groups, which can be exposed to or shielded from water due to external vs internal hydrogen bonding. This is amplified by the shielding of selected amides from the solvent due to bulky side chains. The peptide plus solvent was structurally modeled with molecular dynamics methods, and then an electrostatic field-based parametrization correction was added to the force field and intensity tensors to compensate for the solvent dipolar field. The effect of the shielding and subsequent reordering of modes has a larger impact on VCD than IR band shapes.

Raman and Raman optical activity (ROA) spectra of molecules reflect not only molecular structure and conformation but also the dynamics and interactions with the solvent. For polar, biologically relevant molecules in aqueous environment, this often complicates the band assignment and interpretation of the spectra. In the present study, implicit dielectric and explicit solvent models are compared with respect to the influence of the choice of solvent model on the spectral shape. Lactamide and 2-aminopropanol were selected as model compounds, and the Raman and ROA spectra were measured for both enantiomers. Geometries of explicitly solvated clusters were derived from quantum-mechanical calculations, classical (MD), and Car-Parrinello (CPMD) molecular dynamics. The results indicate that although the dielectric model reasonably well reproduces the main spectral features, more faithful intensity profiles, including the inhomogeneous band broadening, are obtained from the explicit MD and CPMD clusters. Additionally, the CPMD clusters are capable of reproducing most spectral features better than the classical dynamics, provided the simulation time is long enough to allow for a complete sampling of the conformational space. The hydrogen-bonded water molecules of the first hydration shell significantly influence the spectral intensities, whereas the effect of loosely attached or distant solvent molecules is minor. In order to average the signal, however, a relatively large number of MD geometries need to be considered, as was also exemplified by simulations of the ROA spectrum of the achiral molecule glycine. An explicit solvent modeling of sizable systems thus requires extensive computations, which became possible only recently due to the development of efficient analytical computational techniques.

No abstract