Quyen V. Vu

Several mechanisms are known to cause monomeric protein misfolding. Coarse-grained simulations have predicted an additional mechanism exists involving off-pathway, noncovalent lasso entanglements, which are long-lived kinetic traps and structurally resemble the native state. Here, we examine whether such misfolded states occur in long-timescale, all-atom folding simulations of ubiquitin and λ-repressor. We find that these entangled misfolded states are populated in higher-resolution models. However, because of the small size of ubiquitin and λ-repressor, these states are short-lived. In contrast, coarse-grained simulations of a larger protein, IspE, predict that it populates long-lived misfolded states. Using an Arrhenius extrapolation applied to all-atom simulations, we estimate that these IspE misfolded states have lifetimes similar to the native state while remaining soluble. We further show that these misfolded states are consistent with the structural changes inferred from limited proteolysis and cross-linking mass spectrometry experiments. Our results indicate that misfolded states composed of non-native entanglements can persist for long timescales in both all-atom simulations and experiments.

In the ribosome vestibule, the contact minimum between two methane molecules is half as stable as compared to in bulk solution, demonstrating that the hydrophobic effect is weakened in the vestibule of ribosome exit tunnel.Interactions between the ribosome and nascent chain can destabilize folded domains in the ribosome exit tunnel’s vestibule, the last 3 nm of the exit tunnel where tertiary folding can occur. Here, we test if a contribution to this destabilization is a weakening of hydrophobic association, the driving force for protein folding. Using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we calculate the potential-of-mean force between two methane molecules along the center line of the ribosome exit tunnel and in bulk solution. Associated methanes, we find, are half as stable in the ribosome’s vestibule as compared to bulk solution, demonstrating that the hydrophobic effect is weakened by the presence of the ribosome. This decreased stability arises from a decrease in the amount of water entropy gained upon the association of the methanes. And this decreased entropy gain originates from water molecules being more ordered in the vestibule as compared to bulk solution. Therefore, the hydrophobic effect is weaker in the vestibule because waters released from the first solvation shell of methanes upon association do not gain as much entropy in the vestibule as they do upon release in bulk solution. These findings mean that nascent proteins pass through a ribosome vestibule environment that can destabilize folded structures, which has the potential to influence co-translational protein folding pathways, energetics, and kinetics.

The ejection of nascent proteins out of the ribosome exit tunnel, after their covalent bond to transfer-RNA has been broken, has not been experimentally studied due to challenges in sample preparation. Here, we investigate this process using a combination of multiscale modeling, ribosome profiling, and gene ontology analyses. Simulating the ejection of a representative set of 122 E. coli proteins we find a greater than 1000-fold variation in ejection times. Nascent proteins enriched in negatively charged residues near their C-terminus eject the fastest, while nascent chains enriched in positively charged residues tend to eject much more slowly. More work is required to pull slowly ejecting proteins out of the exit tunnel than quickly ejecting proteins, according to all-atom simulations. An energetic decomposition reveals, for slowly ejecting proteins, that this is due to the strong attractive electrostatic interactions between the nascent chain and the negatively charged ribosomal-RNA lining the exit tunnel, and for quickly ejecting proteins, it is due to their repulsive electrostatic interactions with the exit tunnel. Ribosome profiling data from E. coli reveals that the presence of slowly ejecting sequences correlates with ribosomes spending more time at stop codons, indicating that the ejection process might delay ribosome recycling. Proteins that have the highest positive charge density at their C-terminus are overwhelmingly ribosomal proteins, suggesting the possibility that this sequence feature may aid in the cotranslational assembly of ribosomes by delaying the release of nascent ribosomal proteins into the cytosol. Thus, nascent chain ejection times from the ribosome can vary greatly between proteins due to differential electrostatic interactions, can influence ribosome recycling, and could be particularly relevant to the synthesis and cotranslational behavior of some proteins.