The study of amorphous aggregation of tobacco mosaic virus coat protein by dynamic light scattering

Abstract The kinetics of heat-induced and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide induced amorphous aggregation of tobacco mosaic virus coat protein in Na + /Na + phosphate buffer, pH 8.0, have been studied using dynamic light scattering. In the case of thermal aggregation (52 °C) the character of the dependence of the hydrodynamic radius ( R h ) on time indicates that at certain instant the population of aggregates is split into two components. The size of the aggregates of one kind remains practically constant in time, whereas the size of aggregates of other kind increases monotonously in time reaching the values characteristic of aggregates prone to precipitation ( R h  = 900–1500 nm). The construction of the light scattering intensity versus R h plots shows that the large aggregates (the start aggregates) exist in the system at the instant the initial increase in the light scattering intensity is observed. For thermal aggregation the R h value for the start aggregates is independent of the protein concentration and equal to 21.6 nm. In the case of the surfactant-induced aggregation (at 25 °C) no splitting of the aggregates into two components is observed and the size of the start aggregates turns out to be much larger (107 nm) than on the thermal aggregation. The dependence of R h on time for both heat-induced aggregation and surfactant-induced aggregation after a lapse of time follows the power law indicating that the aggregation process proceeds in the kinetic regime of diffusion-limited cluster–cluster aggregation. Fractal dimension is close to 1.8. The molecular chaperone α-crystallin does not affect the kinetics of tobacco mosaic virus coat protein thermal aggregation.