Abstract
As a tribute to Professor Oleg B. Ptitsyn, we organized an interview with Professor Akiyoshi Wada held in Tokyo in the middle of September 2019. Both Professor A. Wada and the late Professor O. B. Ptitsyn greatly contributed to the field of protein biophysics, and they played leading roles in establishing the concept of the “Molten Globule state” 35–40 years ago. This editorial is intended to recount, as accurately as possible, some episodes during the early days of protein research that led to the discovery of this state, and how this concept was coined the “Molten Globule state” and came to be widely accepted by biophysicists, biochemists, and molecular biologists.
Highlights
Doty at Harvard University, where he measured the intrinsic viscosity and specific rotation to characterize the helix–coil transition of polyglutamine polypeptides upon pH titration [6]
Several aspects of the research on the Molten Globule state appear to be related to the experiments performed in Doty’s laboratory, and this could explain why the Molten Globule state of Cytochrome c was observed despite it appearing only under very un-physiological conditions
PH titration was used for monitoring the pH denaturation of polyglutamine polypeptides, and adding salt was a natural idea for lowering the electrostatic repulsive interactions and trying to stabilize the protein structure
Summary
Wada coined the name “Molten Globule state” during a discussion with Professors O. Wada opted for “Molten Globule state”, which did sound better. B. Ptitsyn groups swiftly adopted the term Molten Globule state.
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