Date of Award

Fall 2014

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Nikolai R. Skrynnikov

Committee Chair

Nikolai R. Skrynnikov

Committee Member 1

Carol B. Post

Committee Member 2

Alan M. Friedman

Committee Member 3

Timothy S. Zwier

Committee Member 4

John S. Harwood

Abstract

Disordered proteins are one class of proteins which do not possess well-folded three-dimensional structures as their native conformations. Many eukaryotic proteins have been found to be fully disordered or contain certain disordered regions. Disordered proteins usually display several characteristic properties, such as increased motional freedom and the conformational heterogeneity caused by that. The elements of structural disorder are commonly involved in many important biological functions and are implicated in many diseases. Therefore, the study of disordered proteins has become one of the most important research topics in recent years. This thesis presents results from three different research projects; the common feature is that all systems being studied contain varying amount of structural disorder. Most results have been obtained based on experimental nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Both are among the most popular biophysical techniques for studying molecular dynamics. The first project investigates the relationship between domain cooperativity and residual dipolar coupling (RDC) parameters based on a series of two-domain chimera proteins with disordered linkers. Many eukaryotic proteins contain multiple domains and their biological functions are closely related to the property of domain cooperativity, which is often regulated by the linker region. Therefore it is necessary to develop suitable tools to characterize linker region properties in order to better understand biological functions of multidomain proteins. The second project is about the development of NMR pulse sequences for studying disordered proteins. Two new NMR pulse sequences, PD-CPMG and CP-HISQC, have been developed. Both experiments are well suited for studying intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) or intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) under physiological conditions. These two experiments produce higher precision for 15N R2 rates measurement or higher sensitivity in 1H– 15N HSQC spectra respectively. Besides, they also show many advantages over most other existing experiments for studying IDPs. The last project is about protein-peptide encounter complex study based on Crk-Sos model system. The ten-residue Sos peptide serves as a minimal model for disordered proteins. Encounter complex is an important type of intermediate state formed during many protein interactions. Such complexes are usually characterized by a large amount of motional freedom and conformational heterogeneity. Therefore their properties are considerably different from tight-binding complexes which are more commonly studied. Although it is usually quite difficult to study encounter complexes using standard biophysical techniques, in this project we have successfully characterized structural and dynamic properties of Crk-Sos electrostatic encounter complex with a combination of MD simulations and experimental NMR approaches. It can be directly seen from the structural model based on MD trajectories that Sos peptide in the encounter complex remains highly dynamic, sampling large area on the surface of Crk N-SH3 domain. Such strategy can also be utilized for studying many other encounter complexes involving disordered proteins or peptides

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