Group 3 LEA Protein Model Peptides Suppress Heat-Induced Lysozyme Aggregation. Elucidation of the Underlying Mechanism Using Coarse-Grained Molecular Simulations.

We investigated experimentally whether a short peptide, called PvLEA-22, which consists of two tandem repeats of an 11-mer motif of Group 3 late embryogenesis abundant proteins, has a chaperone-like function for denatured proteins. Lysozyme was selected as a target protein. Turbidity measurements indicated that the peptide suppresses the heat-induced aggregation of lysozyme when added at a molar ratio of PvLEA-22/lysozyme > 40. CD and DSC measurements confirmed that the lysozyme was denatured on heating, but spontaneously refolded on subsequent cooling in the presence of the peptide. As a result, up to 80% of the native catalytic activity of lysozyme was preserved. Similar chaperone-like activity was also observed for a peptide with the same amino acid composition as PvLEA-22, but whose sequence is scrambled. To elucidate the underlying mechanism of the chaperone function of these peptides, we performed coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. This revealed that a denatured lysozyme molecule is shielded by several peptide molecules in aqueous solution, which act as a physical barrier, reducing the opportunities for collision between denatured proteins. An important finding was that a peptide bound to the denatured protein is very rapidly replaced by another: due to such rapid exchange, peptide-protein contact time is very short, on the order of ~200 ns. Therefore, the peptide does not constrain the behavior of the denatured protein, which can refold freely.