New Powerful Protein Denaturant

Quantifying why urea is a protein denaturant, whereas glycine betaine is a protein stabilizer.

To explain the large, opposite effects of urea and glycine betaine (GB) on stability of folded proteins and protein complexes, we quantify and interpret preferential interactions of urea with 45 model compounds displaying protein functional groups and compare with a previous analysis of GB. This information is needed to use urea as a probe of coupled folding in protein processes and to tune mol...

Denaturant-dependent folding of GFP.

We use molecular simulations using a coarse-grained model to map the folding landscape of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), which is extensively used as a marker in cell biology and biotechnology. Thermal and Guanidinium chloride (GdmCl) induced unfolding of a variant of GFP, without the chromophore, occurs in an apparent two-state manner. The calculated midpoint of the equilibrium folding in Gd...

Protein Explorer: easy yet powerful macromolecular visualization.

Protein Explorer (PE, http://www.proteinexplorer.org) enables students, educators and other nonspecialists to visualize macromolecular structures easily. It also offers several advanced capabilities useful to protein structure specialists. Great attention has been given to making PE easy to use. Explanations, color keys and troubleshooting information are displayed automatically. There are also...

Employee motivation: a powerful new model.

Motivating employees begins with recognizing that to do their best work, people must be in an environment that meets their basic emotional drives to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend. So say Nohria and Groysberg, of Harvard Business School, and Lee, of the Center for Research on Corporate Performance. Using the results of surveys they conducted with employees at a wide range of Fortune 500 ...

Protein hydrogen exchange in denaturant: quantitative analysis by a two-process model.