Effects of molecular crowding on the structures, interactions, and functions of nucleic acids.

Macromolecular Crowding In Vitro, In Vivo, and In Between

RNA performs important cellular functions in contemporary life forms. Its ability to act both as a catalyst and a storage mechanism for genetic information is also an important part of the RNA world hypothesis. Compartmentalization within modern cells allows the local concentration of RNA to be controlled and it has been suggested that this was also important in early life forms. Here, we mimic intracellular compartmentalization and macromolecular crowding by partitioning RNA in an aqueous two-phase system (ATPS). We show that the concentration of RNA is enriched by up to 3,000-fold in the dextran-rich phase of a polyethylene glycol/dextran ATPS and demonstrate that this can lead to approximately 70-fold increase in the rate of ribozyme cleavage. This rate enhancement can be tuned by the relative volumes of the two phases in the ATPS. Our observations support the importance of compartmentalization in the attainment of function in an RNA World as well as in modern biology.

RNA catalysis through compartmentalization

There has been a long-standing controversy regarding the effect of chemical denaturants on the dimensions of unfolded and intrinsically disordered proteins: A wide range of experimental techniques suggest that polypeptide chains expand with increasing denaturant concentration, but several studies using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) have reported no such increase of the radius of gyration (Rg). This inconsistency challenges our current understanding of the mechanism of chemical denaturants, which are widely employed to investigate protein folding and stability. Here, we use a combination of single-molecule Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET), SAXS, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and two-focus fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (2f-FCS) to characterize the denaturant dependence of the unfolded state of the spectrin domain R17 and the intrinsically disordered protein ACTR in two different denaturants. Standard analysis of the primary data clearly indicates an expansion of the unfolded state wi...

Consistent View of Polypeptide Chain Expansion in Chemical Denaturants from Multiple Experimental Methods.

Protein stability is usually studied in simple buffered solutions, but most proteins function inside cells, where the heterogeneous and crowded environment presents a complex, nonideal system. Proteins are expected to behave differently under cellular crowding owing to two types of contacts: hard-core repulsions and weak, chemical interactions. The effect of hard-core repulsions is purely entropic, resulting in volume exclusion owing to the mere presence of the crowders. The weak interactions can be repulsive or attractive, thus enhancing or diminishing the excluded volume, respectively. We used a reductionist approach to assess the effects of intracellular crowding. Escherichia coli cytoplasm was dialyzed, lyophilized, and resuspended at two concentrations. NMR-detected amide proton exchange was then used to quantify the stability of the globular protein chymotrypsin inhibitor 2 (CI2) in these crowded solutions. The cytosol destabilizes CI2, and the destabilization increases with increasing cytosol concentration. This observation shows that the cytoplasm interacts favorably, but nonspecifically, with CI2, and these interactions overcome the stabilizing hard-core repulsions. The effects of the cytosol are even stronger than those of homogeneous protein crowders, reinforcing the biological significance of weak, nonspecific interactions.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/110/48/19342.full.pdf

Impact of reconstituted cytosol on protein stability

Small solutes affect protein and nucleic acid processes because of favorable or unfavorable chemical interactions of the solute with the biopolymer surface exposed or buried in the process. Large solutes also exclude volume and affect processes where biopolymer molecularity and/or shape changes. Here, we develop an analysis to separate and interpret or predict excluded volume and chemical effects of a flexible coil polymer on a process. We report a study of the concentration-dependent effects of the full series from monomeric to polymeric PEG on intramolecular hairpin and intermolecular duplex formation by 12-nucleotide DNA strands. We find that chemical effects of PEG on these processes increase in proportion to the product of the amount of DNA surface exposed on melting and the amount of PEG surface that is accessible to this DNA, and these effects are completely described by two interaction terms that quantify the interactions between this DNA surface and PEG end and interior groups. We find that excluded volume effects, once separated from these chemical effects, are quantitatively described by the analytical theory of Hermans, which predicts the excluded volume between a flexible polymer and a rigid molecule. From this analysis, we show that at constant concentration of PEG monomer, increasing PEG size increases the excluded volume effect but decreases the chemical interaction effect, because in a large PEG coil a smaller fraction of the monomers are accessible to the DNA. Volume exclusion by PEG has a much larger effect on intermolecular duplex formation than on intramolecular hairpin formation.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/31/12699.full.pdf

Separation of preferential interaction and excluded volume effects on DNA duplex and hairpin stability

Separation of Preferential Interaction and Crowding Effects on DNA Hairpin and Duplex Formation

Small and large PEGs greatly increase chemical potentials of globular proteins (μ2), thereby favoring precipitation, crystallization, and protein–protein interactions that reduce water-accessible protein surface and/or protein-PEG excluded volume. To determine individual contributions of PEG-protein chemical and excluded volume interactions to μ2 as functions of PEG molality m3, we analyze published chemical potential increments μ23 = dμ2/dm3 quantifying unfavorable interactions of PEG (PEG200-PEG6000) with BSA and lysozyme. For both proteins, μ23 increases approximately linearly with the number of PEG residues (N3). A 1 molal increase in concentration of PEG -CH2OCH2- groups, for any chain-length PEG, increases μBSA by ∼2.7 kcal/mol and μlysozyme by ∼1.0 kcal/mol. These values are similar to predicted chemical interactions of PEG -CH2OCH2- groups with these protein components (BSA ∼3.3 kcal/mol, lysozyme ∼0.7 kcal/mol), dominated by unfavorable interactions with amide and carboxylate oxygens and counterions. While these chemical effects should be dominant for small PEGs, larger PEGS are expected to exhibit unfavorable excluded volume interactions and reduced chemical interactions because of shielding of PEG residues in PEG flexible coils. We deduce that these excluded volume and chemical shielding contributions largely compensate, explaining why the dependence of μ23 on N3 is similar for both small and large PEGs. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 103: 517–527, 2015.

/pdf/separating-chemical-and-excluded-volume-interactions-of-4dcaq698s2.pdf

Separating chemical and excluded volume interactions of polyethylene glycols with native proteins: Comparison with PEG effects on DNA helix formation.

In this work, we obtain the data needed to predict chemical interactions of polyethylene glycols (PEGs) and glycerol with proteins and related organic compounds and thereby interpret or predict chemical effects of PEGs on protein processes. To accomplish this, we determine interactions of glycerol and tetraEG with >30 model compounds displaying the major C, N, and O functional groups of proteins. Analysis of these data yields coefficients (α values) that quantify interactions of glycerol, tetraEG, and PEG end (-CH2OH) and interior (-CH2OCH2-) groups with these groups, relative to interactions with water. TetraEG (strongly) and glycerol (weakly) interact favorably with aromatic C, amide N, and cationic N, but unfavorably with amide O, carboxylate O, and salt ions. Strongly unfavorable O and salt anion interactions help make both small and large PEGs effective protein precipitants. Interactions of tetraEG and PEG interior groups with aliphatic C are quite favorable, while interactions of glycerol and PEG end groups with aliphatic C are not. Hence, tetraEG and PEG300 favor unfolding of the DNA-binding domain of lac repressor (lacDBD), while glycerol and di- and monoethylene glycol are stabilizers. Favorable interactions with aromatic and aliphatic C explain why PEG400 greatly increases the solubility of aromatic hydrocarbons and steroids. PEG400-steroid interactions are unusually favorable, presumably because of simultaneous interactions of multiple PEG interior groups with the fused ring system of the steroid. Using α values reported here, chemical contributions to PEG m-values can be predicted or interpreted in terms of changes in water-accessible surface area (ΔASA) and separated from excluded volume effects.

/pdf/chemical-interactions-of-polyethylene-glycols-pegs-and-v72vzpoh2u.pdf

Chemical Interactions of Polyethylene Glycols (PEGs) and Glycerol with Protein Functional Groups: Applications to Effects of PEG and Glycerol on Protein Processes

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Papers

Separation of preferential interaction and excluded volume effects on DNA duplex and hairpin stability

Separation of Preferential Interaction and Crowding Effects on DNA Hairpin and Duplex Formation

Separating chemical and excluded volume interactions of polyethylene glycols with native proteins: Comparison with PEG effects on DNA helix formation.

Chemical Interactions of Polyethylene Glycols (PEGs) and Glycerol with Protein Functional Groups: Applications to Effects of PEG and Glycerol on Protein Processes