In previous work, we demonstrated that 4-fluoroproline residues can contribute greatly to the conformational stability of the collagen triple helix, and that this stability arises from stereoelectronic effects that fix the pucker of the pyrrolidine ring and thereby preorganize the backbone properly for triple-helix formation. Here, we take a reciprocal approach, demonstrating that the steric ef...

Osmolytes are small molecules that play a central role in cellular homeostasis and the stress response by maintaining protein thermodynamic stability at controlled levels. The underlying physical chemistry that describes how different osmolytes impact folding free energy is well understood, however little is known about their influence on other crucial aspects of protein behavior, such as nativ...

NBO analysis, hybrid density functional theory (B3LYP/6-311+G**) and ab initio molecular orbital (HF/6-311+G**) based methods were used to study the anomeric effects (AE), electrostatic interactions, dipole-dipole interactions and steric repulsion effects on the conformational properties of 2-methoxy- (1), 2-methylthio- (2), 2-methylseleno- (3), 2-fluoro- (4), 2-chloro- (5) and 2-bromocyclohexa...

Disulfide bonds between the side chains of cysteine residues are the only common crosslinks in proteins. Bovine pancreatic ribonuclease A (RNase A) is a 124-residue enzyme that contains four interweaving disulfide bonds (Cys26-Cys84, Cys40-Cys95, Cys58-Cys110, and Cys65-Cys72) and catalyzes the cleavage of RNA. The contribution of each disulfide bond to the conformational stability and catalyti...

Foreign protein Ags are incorporated into APCs and then degraded by endosomal proteases. The peptides are then mounted on MHC II molecules on the surfaces of APCs. The T cell-triggering response and, therefore, the immune response, were suggested to be governed by the degree of conformational stability of the foreign protein Ags. However, there is little evidence that a protein's conformational...

The conformational stability of “melon”, the most commonly observed graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN), is revisited by DFT computations, evidencing close competition among several polymorphs with distinct photophysical properties.