U.S.-Italy Cooperative Research: The Role of Peptide Fragments of Proteins in Folding and Assembly

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This award will support Professor Harold Scheraga of Cornell University and Professor George Nemethy of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in a research collaboration with Professor Adriana Zagari of the University of Naples, Italy. The purpose of the collaboration is the determination of the preferred conformations of several short peptides that form structurally and functionally important parts of proteins. Two specific problems will be investigated. The first problem is that of the nonhelical telopeptides of collagen. These peptides play an important role in directing and stabilizing the particular manner of assembly of collagen, by means of specific interactions with neighboring molecules in aggregates. The second problem concerns several peptides that occur in bovine pancreatic and seminal ribonucleases and have been proposed to play a role in the folding process of these molecules. The aim of both of these investigations is to establish the nature of the interactions of the peptides with the rest of the protein molecule and thereby understand their role in the folding and assembly of native proteins. Preferred conformations of the peptides will be determined by conformational energy computations, X-ray crystallography, and NMR and fluorescence measurements. Interatomic inter- actions between molecules in aggregates will be modeled by energy computations. Peptide synthesis and solution physicochemical measurements will be carried out in Scheraga's laboratory at Cornell. Crystallization and X-ray structural determination will be done by Zagari in Napoli. Conformational energy computations will be carried out by all three groups, coordinated by Nemethy at Mount Sinai. The planning of the project and the interpretation of the results will require the combination of theoretical and experimental approaches.