Protein Stability in Reverse Micelles |
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| Authors: | Michael Senske Dr Austin E Smith Prof Gary J Pielak |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Physical Chemistry II, Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum, Bochum, Germany;2. Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA |
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| Abstract: | The N‐terminal SH3 domain of the Drosophila signal transduction protein drk was encapsulated in reverse micelles. Both the temperature of maximum stability and the melting temperature decreased on encapsulation. Dissecting the temperature‐dependent stability into enthalpic and entropic contributions reveals a stabilizing enthalpic and a destabilizing entropic contribution. These results do not match the expectations of hard‐core excluded volume theory, nor can they be wholly explained by interactions between the head groups in the reverse micelle and the test protein. We suggest that geometric constraints imposed by the reverse micelles need to be considered. |
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| Keywords: | macromolecular crowding NMR spectroscopy protein stability reverse micelles thermodynamics |
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