Probing the relation between protein structure and intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence using superrepressor mutants of thetrp repressor

Analysis of simulated fluorescence intensities decays by a new maximum entropy method algorithm

A new algorithm for the Maximum Entropy Method (MEM) is proposed for recovering the lifetime distribution in time-resolved fluorescence decays. The procedure is based on seeking the distribution that maximizes the Skilling entropy function subjected to the chi-squared constraint χ(2) ~ 1 through iterative linear approximations, LU decomposition of the Hessian matrix of the lagrangian problem and the Golden Section Search for backtracking. The accuracy of this algorithm has been investigated through comparisons with simulated fluorescence decays both of narrow and broad lifetime distributions. The proposed approach is capable to analyse datasets of up to 4,096 points with a discretization ranging from 100 to 1,000 lifetimes. A good agreement with non linear fitting estimates has been observed when the method has been applied to multi-exponential decays. Remarkable results have been also obtained for the broad lifetime distributions where the position is recovered with high accuracy and the distribution width is estimated within 3%. These results indicate that the procedure proposed generates MEM lifetime distributions that can be used to quantify the real heterogeneity of lifetimes in a sample.

Tryptophan fluorescence reveals the presence of long-range interactions in the denatured state of ribonuclease Sa

Characterizing the denatured state ensemble is crucial to understanding protein stability and the mechanism of protein folding. The aim of this research was to see if fluorescence could be used to gain new information on the denatured state ensemble. Ribonuclease Sa (RNase Sa) contains no Trp residues. We made five variants of RNase Sa by adding Trp residues at locations where they are found in other members of the microbial ribonuclease family. To better understand the protein denatured state, we also studied the fluorescence properties of the following peptides: N-acetyl-Trp-amide (NATA), N-acetyl-Ala-Trp-Ala-amide (AWA), N-acetyl-Ala-Ala-Trp-Ala-Ala-amide (AAWAA), and the five pentapeptides with the same sequence as the Trp substitution sites in RNase Sa. The major conclusions are: 1), the wavelength of maximum fluorescence intensity, lambda(max), does not differ significantly for the peptides and the denatured proteins; 2), the fluorescence intensity at lambda(max), I(F), differs significantly for the five Trp containing variants of RNase Sa; 3), the I(F) differences for the denatured proteins are mirrored in the peptides, showing that the short-range effects giving rise to the I(F) differences in the peptides are also present in the proteins; 4) the I(F) values for the denatured proteins are more than 30% greater than for the peptides, showing the presence of long-range effects in the proteins; 5), fluorescence quenching of Trp by acrylamide and iodide is more than 50% greater in the peptides than in the denatured proteins, showing that long-range effects limit the accessibility of the quenchers to the Trp side chains in the proteins; and 6), these results show that nonlocal effects in the denatured states of proteins influence Trp fluorescence and accessibility significantly.