Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
7
pubmed:dateCreated
2005-3-29
pubmed:abstractText
Conotoxins are short, disulfide-rich peptide neurotoxins produced in the venom of predatory marine cone snails. It is generally accepted that an estimated 100,000 unique conotoxins fall into only a handful of structural groups, based on their disulfide bridging frameworks. This unique molecular diversity poses a protein folding problem of relationships between hypervariability of amino acid sequences and mechanism(s) of oxidative folding. In this study, we present a comparative analysis of the folding properties of four conotoxins sharing an identical pattern of cysteine residues forming three disulfide bridges, but otherwise differing significantly in their primary amino acid sequence. Oxidative folding properties of M-superfamily conotoxins GIIIA, PIIIA, SmIIIA and RIIIK varied with respect to kinetics and thermodynamics. Based on rates for establishing the steady-state distribution of the folding species, two distinct folding mechanisms could be distinguished: first, rapid-collapse folding characterized by very fast, but low-yield accumulation of the correctly folded form; and second, slow-rearrangement folding resulting in higher accumulation of the properly folded form via the reshuffling of disulfide bonds within folding intermediates. Effects of changing the folding conditions indicated that the rapid-collapse and the slow-rearrangement mechanisms were mainly determined by either repulsive electrostatic or productive noncovalent interactions, respectively. The differences in folding kinetics for these two mechanisms were minimized in the presence of protein disulfide isomerase. Taken together, folding properties of conotoxins from the M-superfamily presented in this work and from the O-superfamily published previously suggest that conotoxin sequence diversity is also reflected in their folding properties, and that sequence information rather than a cysteine pattern determines the in vitro folding mechanisms of conotoxins.
pubmed:grant
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:chemical
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Apr
pubmed:issn
1742-464X
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
272
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
1727-38
pubmed:dateRevised
2007-11-14
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2005
pubmed:articleTitle
Oxidative folding of conotoxins sharing an identical disulfide bridging framework.
pubmed:affiliation
Cognetix Inc, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.