PROTEIN STABILITY IN EXTREMOPHILIC ARCHAEA

Roberto Scandurra ¹, Valerio Consalvi ¹, Roberta Chiaraluce ¹, Laura Politi ¹, Paul C. Engel ²

1 Dipartimento di Scienze Biochimiche "A.Rossi-Fanelli" Università 'La Sapienza', P.le A.Moro 5 00185 Rome Italy, ² Department of Biochemistry, Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Abstract

2. Introduction

3. Protein stability

3.1. Thermodynamic aspects of protein stability
3.2. Proteins from (hyper)thermophiles
3.3. Proteins from psychrophiles

4. Structural determinants of protein stability

4.1. Primary structure analysis
4.2. Structural adaptations

5. Conclusions

6. Perspectives

7. References

1. ABSTRACT

Extremophilic microorganisms have adapted their molecular machinery to grow and thrive under the most adverse enviromental conditions. These microorganisms have found their natural habitat at the boiling and freezing point of water, in high salt concentration and at extreme pH values. The extremophilic proteins, selected by Nature to withstand this evolutionary pressure, represent a wide research field for scientists from different disciplines and the study of the determinants of their stability has been an important task for basic and applied research. A surprising conclusion emerges from these studies: there are no general rules to achieve protein stabilization. Each extremophilic protein adopts various strategies and the outstanding adaptation to extreme temperature and solvent conditions is realized through the same weak electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions among the ordinary amino acid residues which are also responsible for the proper balance between protein stability and flexibility in mesophilic proteins.