Dataset Information

A Method for Extracting the Free Energy Surface and Conformational Dynamics of Fast-Folding Proteins from Single Molecule Photon Trajectories.

ABSTRACT: Single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy holds the promise of providing direct measurements of protein folding free energy landscapes and conformational motions. However, fulfilling this promise has been prevented by technical limitations, most notably, the difficulty in analyzing the small packets of photons per millisecond that are typically recorded from individual biomolecules. Such limitation impairs the ability to accurately determine conformational distributions and resolve sub-millisecond processes. Here we develop an analytical procedure for extracting the conformational distribution and dynamics of fast-folding proteins directly from time-stamped photon arrival trajectories produced by single molecule FRET experiments. Our procedure combines the maximum likelihood analysis originally developed by Gopich and Szabo with a statistical mechanical model that describes protein folding as diffusion on a one-dimensional free energy surface. Using stochastic kinetic simulations, we thoroughly tested the performance of the method in identifying diverse fast-folding scenarios, ranging from two-state to one-state downhill folding, as a function of relevant experimental variables such as photon count rate, amount of input data, and background noise. The tests demonstrate that the analysis can accurately retrieve the original one-dimensional free energy surface and microsecond folding dynamics in spite of the sub-megahertz photon count rates and significant background noise levels of current single molecule fluorescence experiments. Therefore, our approach provides a powerful tool for the quantitative analysis of single molecule FRET experiments of fast protein folding that is also potentially extensible to the analysis of any other biomolecular process governed by sub-millisecond conformational dynamics.

SUBMITTER: Ramanathan R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4718529 | biostudies-other | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Recently developed statistical methods by Gopich and Szabo were used to extract folding and unfolding rate coefficients from single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) data for proteins with kinetics too fast to measure waiting time distributions. Two types of experiments and two different analyses were performed. In one experiment bursts of photons were collected from donor and acceptor fluorophores attached to a 73-residue protein, α(3)D, freely diffusing through the illuminated volume of a confocal microscope system. In the second, the protein was immobilized by linkage to a surface, and photons were collected until one of the fluorophores bleached. Folding and unfolding rate coefficients and mean FRET efficiencies for the folded and unfolded subpopulations were obtained from a photon by photon analysis of the trajectories using a maximum likelihood method. The ability of the method to describe the data in terms of a two-state model was checked by recoloring the photon trajectories with the extracted parameters and comparing the calculated FRET efficiency histograms with the measured histograms. The sum of the rate coefficients for the two-state model agreed to within 30% with the relaxation rate obtained from the decay of the donor-acceptor cross-correlation function, confirming the high accuracy of the method. Interestingly, apparently reliable rate coefficients could be extracted using the maximum likelihood method, even at low (<10%) population of the minor component where the cross-correlation function was too noisy to obtain any useful information. The rate coefficients and mean FRET efficiencies were also obtained in an approximate procedure by simply fitting the FRET efficiency histograms, calculated by binning the donor and acceptor photons, with a sum of three-Gaussian functions. The kinetics are exposed in these histograms by the growth of a FRET efficiency peak at values intermediate between the folded and unfolded peaks as the bin size increases, a phenomenon with similarities to NMR exchange broadening. When comparable populations of folded and unfolded molecules are present, this method yields rate coefficients in very good agreement with those obtained with the maximum likelihood method. As a first step toward characterizing transition paths, the Viterbi algorithm was used to locate the most probable transition points in the photon trajectories.

Project description:Conformational motions of proteins are highly dynamic and intrinsically complex. To capture the temporal and spatial complexity of conformational motions and further to understand their roles in protein functions, an attempt is made to probe multidimensional conformational dynamics of proteins besides the typical one-dimensional FRET coordinate or the projected conformational motions on the one-dimensional FRET coordinate. T4 lysozyme hinge-bending motions between two domains along α-helix have been probed by single-molecule FRET. Nevertheless, the domain motions of T4 lysozyme are rather complex involving multiple coupled nuclear coordinates and most likely contain motions besides hinge-bending. It is highly likely that the multiple dimensional protein conformational motions beyond the typical enzymatic hinged-bending motions have profound impact on overall enzymatic functions. In this report, we have developed a single-molecule multiparameter photon stamping spectroscopy integrating fluorescence anisotropy, FRET, and fluorescence lifetime. This spectroscopic approach enables simultaneous observations of both FRET-related site-to-site conformational dynamics and molecular rotational (or orientational) motions of individual Cy3-Cy5 labeled T4 lysozyme molecules. We have further observed wide-distributed rotational flexibility along orientation coordinates by recording fluorescence anisotropy and simultaneously identified multiple intermediate conformational states along FRET coordinate by monitoring time-dependent donor lifetime, presenting a whole picture of multidimensional conformational dynamics in the process of T4 lysozyme open-close hinge-bending enzymatic turnover motions under enzymatic reaction conditions. By analyzing the autocorrelation functions of both lifetime and anisotropy trajectories, we have also observed the dynamic and static inhomogeneity of T4 lysozyme multidimensional conformational fluctuation dynamics, providing a fundamental understanding of the enzymatic reaction turnover dynamics associated with overall enzyme as well as the specific active-site conformational fluctuations that are not identifiable and resolvable in the conventional ensemble-averaged experiment.

Dataset Information

A Method for Extracting the Free Energy Surface and Conformational Dynamics of Fast-Folding Proteins from Single Molecule Photon Trajectories.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets