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How Sensitive is the Amide?I Vibration of the Polypeptide Backbone to Electric Fields?

ABSTRACT: Site-selective isotopic labeling of amide carbonyls offers a nonperturbative means to introduce a localized infrared probe into proteins. Although this strategy has been widely used to investigate various biological questions, the dependence of the underlying amide?I vibrational frequency on electric fields (or Stark tuning rate) has not been fully determined, which prevents it from being used in a quantitative manner in certain applications. Herein, through the use of experiments and molecular dynamics simulations, the Stark tuning rate of the amide?I vibration of an isotopically labeled backbone carbonyl in a transmembrane ?-helix is determined to be approximately 1.4?cm(-1) /(MV/cm). This result provides a quantitative basis for using this vibrational model to assess local electric fields in proteins, among other applications. For instance, by using this value, we are able to show that the backbone region of a dipeptide has a surprisingly low dielectric constant.

SUBMITTER: Oh KI

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4715676 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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How Sensitive is the Amide I Vibration of the Polypeptide Backbone to Electric Fields?

Oh Kwang-Im KI Fiorin Giacomo G Gai Feng F

Chemphyschem : a European journal of chemical physics and physical chemistry 20151012 17

Site-selective isotopic labeling of amide carbonyls offers a nonperturbative means to introduce a localized infrared probe into proteins. Although this strategy has been widely used to investigate various biological questions, the dependence of the underlying amide I vibrational frequency on electric fields (or Stark tuning rate) has not been fully determined, which prevents it from being used in a quantitative manner in certain applications. Herein, through the use of experiments and molecular ...[more]

PMID: 26419214

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Project description:Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is the most common form of adult malignant brain tumor, highly heterogeneous and relatively resistant to therapy with a poor prognosis. As other cancers, GBM starts from a relatively small fraction of poorly differentiated and particularly aggressive cancer stem cells (CSCs), responsible for aberrant proliferation and invasion, rapidly spreading the tumor growth in the other parts of the central nervous system. Due to the extreme tumor heterogeneity, standard therapies (i.e., surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy) provide poor positive outcomes and cancers usually recur. Therefore, alternative approaches, possibly targeting CSCs, are necessary for searching effective therapeutic strategies against GBM. Among many emerging new therapeutic strategies, ultra-short pulsed electric fields (PEF) are considered extremely promising in cancer therapy and our previous results demonstrated the capability of a specific electric pulse protocol, characterized by a high pulse amplitude and a short duration, to selectively affect medulloblastoma CSCs preserving normal cells. Here, we tested the same exposure protocol to investigate the response of U87 GBM cells, and of U87-derived neurospheres. By analyzing different in vitro biological endpoints and taking advantage of transcriptomic and bioinformatics analyses, we found that, independently of CSCs content, PEF exposure affected cell proliferation and differentially regulated hypoxia, inflammation and P53/cell cycle checkpoints. PEF exposure also significantly reduced the clonogenic potential, reducing the ability to form new neurospheres, and inhibited the invasion potential. Importantly, exclusively in U87 neurospheres, PEF exposure changed the expression of stemness/differentiation genes. Our results, confirm this physical stimulus as a promising treatment to destabilize the extreme intra-tumoral GBM heterogeneity opening up the possibility to develop future therapeutic strategies mediated by PEF exposure.

Dataset Information

How Sensitive is the Amide?I Vibration of the Polypeptide Backbone to Electric Fields?

Publications

How Sensitive is the Amide I Vibration of the Polypeptide Backbone to Electric Fields?

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