• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.1640-1644
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• 2011

Water-soluble mutant of intrinsically insoluble protein, crambin, was produced by mutagenesis based on the sequence analysis with homologous proteins. Thr1, Phe13, and Lys33 of crambin were substituted for Lys, Tyr, and Lys, respectively. The resultant mutant was soluble in aqueous buffer as well as in dodecylphosphocholine (DPC) micelle solution. The $^1H-^{15}N$ spectrum of the mutant crambin showed spectral similarity to that of the wild-type protein except for local regions proximal to the sites of mutation. Solution structure of water-soluble mutant crambin was determined in aqueous buffer by NMR spectroscopy. The structure was almost identical to the wild-type structure determined in non-aqueous solvent. Subtle difference in structure was very local and related to the change of the intra- and inter-protein hydrophobic interaction of crambin. The structural details for the enhanced solubility of crambin in aqueous solvent by the mutation were provided and discussed.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.1139-1142
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• 2009

Refinement of NMR structures by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with a solvent model has improved the structural quality. In this study, we applied MD refinement with the generalized Born (GB) implicit solvent model to protein structure determined under membrane-like environments. Despite popularity of the GB model, its applications to the refinement of NMR structures of hydrophobic proteins, in which detergents or organic solvents enclose proteins, are limited, and there is little information on the use of another GB parameter for these cases. We carried out MD refinement of crambin NMR structure in dodecylphosphocholine (DPC) micelles (Ahn et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 4398-4404) with GB/Surface area model and two different surface tension coefficients, one for aquatic and the other for hydrophobic conditions. Our data show that, of two structures by MD refinement with GB model, the one refined with the parameter to consider hydrophobic condition had the better qualities in terms of precision and solvent accessibility.