Protein Composition Determines the Effect of Crowding on the Properties of Disordered Proteins.

ABSTRACT: Unlike dilute experimental conditions under which biological molecules are typically characterized, the cell interior is crowded by macromolecules, which affects both the thermodynamics and kinetics of in vivo processes. Although the excluded-volume effects of macromolecular crowding are expected to cause compaction of unfolded and disordered proteins, the extent of this effect is uncertain. We use a coarse-grained model to represent proteins with varying sequence content and directly observe changes in chain dimensions in the presence of purely repulsive spherical crowders. We find that the extent of crowding-induced compaction is dependent not only on crowder size and concentration, but also on the properties of the protein itself. In fact, we observe a nonmonotonic trend between the dim

SUBMITTER: Miller CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4944663 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature